Nz Walking Conference 2008 Report Back
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STRATEGY AND POLICY COMMITTEE 11 SEPTEMBER 2008 REPORT 5 (1215/52/IM) NZ WALKING CONFERENCE 2008 REPORT BACK 1. Purpose of Report To report back to Councillors on the 2008 NZ Walking Conference. 2. Executive Summary The third NZ Walking Conference was held in Auckland in August 2008. Cr Celia Wade-Brown attended this two-day conference. Some attendees offset the carbon from their trips using the Landcare programme - see http://www.carbonzero.co.nz/ . It is a biennial conference, alternating with the NZ Cycling Conference. The conference was organised by Living Streets Aotearoa. Sponsors included Land Transport New Zealand, Transit, the Health Sponsorship Council and other companies and organisations. Attendees included transport engineers, planners, community workers, road safety staff, academics, policy advisors, researchers, recreation planners, health promoters, councillors and students. There was a wide geographic spread from Queenstown and Dunedin in the South Island to Whangarei in the North as well as all the main centres. There was a 50% increase in attendance over the second conference, held in 2006. 3. Recommendations It is recommended that the committee: 1. Receive the information 4. Discussion The 2008 NZ Walking Conference coincided with the new New Zealand Transport Authority and the announcement of the updated New Zealand Transport Strategy and the Government Position Statement on Transport. All the central government changes highlight the importance of walking as a sole or part transport mode. Christine Rose, Chair of the Auckland Regional Council Transport, Urban Development Committee and the Regional Land Transport Committee welcomed us to Auckland. The Transport Minister, the Hon Annette King MP, enthusiastically opened the conference, stressing the health benefits of an active lifestyle. Ironically, her walk to the conference showed the delays and dangers of crossing the busy Panmure Highway. Her speech may be read at http://www.beehive.govt.nz/speech/national+walking+conference “Walking is certainly one of my favourite modes. It’s environmentally, socially and economically sustainable, it’s healthy, and it even makes good economic sense – particularly in a world where the price of oil has been reaching record levels. The latest research on health benefit values from cycling and walking show that there is a health benefit of 50 cents per kilometre for cyclists and $1 per kilometre for pedestrians. These are conservative values…. More than all of that, however, walking is fun. There were a mixture of plenary sessions and smaller concurrent sessions. I have selected a few highlights. Staff working for MoT or the New Zealand Transport Agency outlined some key aims of the updated New Zealand Transport Strategy. The relationship between Transport and the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy, Healthy Eating, Healthy Action, Road Safety to 2010 and the Injury Prevention Strategy were noted. Funding doesn’t necessarily support these connections. The target to “Increase walking, cycling and other active modes to 30 percent of total trips in urban areas by 2040” remains from the draft. Delegates were pleased that “further work will be undertaken to develop separate walking and cycling targets.” The focus on children "It will be particularly important to encourage children to walk, cycle and use public transport, since experience as a child can influence how people choose to travel as an adult.” endorses some of the direction our Wellington Walking Plan is suggesting. The Strategy can be found at www.mot.govt.nz/assets/Downloads/NZTS-final-PDF.pdf Tim Hughes introduced the Pedestrian Planning and Design Guide, which members of Living Streets Aotearoa had had some input to. The most important objective of this guide is to increase walking numbers and simultaneously reduce the road toll. Several effects were described – safety in numbers, taming traffic and better walking facilities. Recent New Zealand data (Shane Turner) shows a powerful effect on increased safety with more people walking even at low pedestrian numbers. Slip, trip and stumble falls on footpaths rival motor crashes for the number of hospitalisations, especially among the elderly. One emphasis was to integrate transport thinking so EVERY project is a walking project rather than siloed thinking with a meagre budget for walking-only projects. International Keynote speaker - Dan Burden Dan Burden is an internationally recognized authority on walkability, liveability, healthy streets, and Smart Growth. Living Streets Aotearoa invited him to be the keynote speaker of the conference. Time Magazine recently listed Mr Burden as “one of the six most important civic innovators in the world.” Mr Burden is a former National Geographic photographer who uses photography to illustrate design concepts to help communities realise how to change their focus onto people, instead of cars, without banning the automobile. Mr Burden walks for a living. In 1996 Dan founded Walkable Communities, Inc. www.walkable.org a non-profit group that has been assisting North American communities to become more walkable. You can still hear some of Mr Burden’s interviews on RadioNZ while he was here - http://www.radionz.co.nz/search?mode=results&queries_all_query=dan+burd en A number of seminars and workshops were organised round the country during his visit and people from Waitakere, Wellington, Tauranga and Christchurch benefited from a special focus from Mr Burden. His presentations are inspiring and very visual – including many photographs he took on this NZ visit. Mr Burden led three sessions at the conference – “What is a walkable community?”, “Building Healthy Streets” and a wrap up at the end. He was humble about how many American communities had built car- dependent sprawl, however his demonstrations of change were heartening and possibly more useful than illustrations of dense European centres built in earlier centuries. The attitude of an Los Angeles engineer in the 1970s “If it weren’t for the damn pedestrian, there would be no traffic problems in LA!” has given way to a healthier outlook, although Los Angeles still has 66% of its urban area under concrete or asphalt, i.e. neither buildings nor reserves. Change is strongly connected with new urbanist principles. As well as walkable cities being prosperous, Mr Burden noted recent studies which show that commuting is the daily activity people dislike most. He had some fascinating data showing that traffic moves best at lower speeds and that the carrying capacity at 40k is higher than at 60k, partly due to less stop-start and partly due to following distances. This has been modelled by mathematicians. Mr Burden believes walkable cities are built around connecting great neighbourhoods, with community gardens, greenway trails and cycleways. Need good streets not windswept car parking. The state of the first 3m outside the front door is critical. He’s passionate about street trees – www.walkable.org/download/22_benefits.pdf enlarges on his points about their economic, safety and health benefits. Density should be applauded if there is also amenity – for example, Venice has about 115 people per hectare and Rodney 35 people per hectare and which do people generally prefer? Several photo montages of before and after shots reminded me of Kobus Mentz’s work on Adelaide Road – calming the traffic (though not removing it all), increasing bike lanes, street trees and increasing commercial/residential activity and height – especially redeeming to strip malls, i.e. long lines of showrooms and drive-through food outlets. Really strong centres are critical to achieving walkable communities. Mr Burden suggested five keys to a walkable place – security, convenience, efficiency, comfort and welcome. While he is supportive of cyclists, he emphasised that in order to care for pedestrians, cyclist’s needs had to be considered or they would encroach on walking space. In “Building Health Communities”, Mr Burden explained that an existing 4-lane highway carrying 18,000 vpd was transformed into a 2 lanes plus bike lanes plus trees corridor that still carried 18.000 vpd. He called for more complete streets that served all modes. In addition to the plenary sessions, there were three streams. Since only two went from WCC, I attended Walking Promotion and an officer attended Walking by Design. John White highlighted physical activity submissions to the Health Select Committee Inquiry on Obesity and that they had been overlooked in favour of a focus on food. Mr White was of the view that both healthy eating and physical activity were important. He emphasises that daily activity such as walking to work or school was important. No major high quality review has suggested that diet is more important than physical activity. www.livingstreets.org.nz/pdf/PA_report_62p.pdf Penny Mitropolous highlighted that “physical activity is not just organised sport.” – a refreshing admission from a Sports Trust! Rotorua has many events in Walktober.and the Sports Trust holds Walking meetings Sandy Ritchie talked about City on its Feet, emphasising the recreational component. Work has also been done on a rewards system similar to FlyBuys to encourage people to walk to and for work. A contribution stuck in my mind saying that instead of using the jargon of “active modes” to mean walking, cycling, skateboarding etc, we start to use “sedentary modes” to include driving and public transport without a healthy walk at the beginning or end! There was a strong emphasis on the prosperity and desirability of walkable cities and the possibility of transforming quite ugly areas into walkable zones. Too many of the recreational/fitness presentations ignored the walk to work or walk to school aspects and while leisure walking events may encourage some, it’s frequency doesn’t match up with the daily walk. People’s general lack of knowledge of their own towns and cities and safe pleasant routes came across in discussion as well. Signage and maps were mentioned as necessary as well as having mixed-use areas.