Reflections on Safer Walking, Cycling, and Motorcycling in Aotearoa

As part of Road Safety Week,  Brake and the Australasian College of Road Safety (ACRS) NZ Chapter hosted a webinar on Implementing Safer Walking, Cycling and Motorcycling in New Zealand. The webinar included a great mix of innovations and food for thought.  

“Wherever you have a graph, also have a story” 

Hamish Mackie reflected on the challenges for active transport that we face in New Zealand, where even though the local research and evidence makes clear that walking and biking offer considerable health, environmental and economic benefits, our transport and health policies still don’t place enough value on active travel.  

He observed that a big part of the challenge is that the benefits of active travel, though many, are broadly distributed across government and society. While generating many different benefits is a good thing, it can make it harder to pull together an investment case to benefit one part of government and justify dedicated funding.  

This is a socio-technical challenge – without a mandate to implement change, and the necessary investment and societal buy in, inclusion of active modes tends to be lagging in integrated transportation planning. However, with implementation and examples gathering momentum, a new emphasis on capturing personal experiences and sharing stories as part of project evaluation aims to improve societal understanding of the relationship between streets, health, wellbeing, and climate change.

Te Ara Mua – Future Streets is a project in Māngere Central to reflect cultural identity and to make the neighbourhood safer and easier for people to travel around, especially in active ways like walking, cycling, or scooting. Between 2014 and 2018, new infrastructure to improve travel connections and lower traffic speeds was installed, including raised crossings, bike lanes, and wider footpaths. The benefits play out in both the statistics, and the personal stories – injury crashes have reduced by 80%, and the amount of people using small, personal mobility devices such as walkers, scooters and prams increased from 0.3% to 1.9% at a key crossing location, while Pacific Elders, Kaumatua, and wheelchair users have shared stories about what improved accessibility in their neighborhood has meant to them.  

Hamish highlighted what he’s learnt through this project– the value of considering qualitative human experience as part of the evaluation process. It was important to the community to hear stories from people who actually live there and what it actually means to them. Recruiting local researchers to do the qualitative research was another evolution in the approach, which helped capture local voices in the evaluation process.  

“Selecting our approach depends on the problem and the budget.” 

Irene Tse showcased innovative work on smart intersection design. In Auckland, over 50% of pedestrian, cyclist and motorcyclist crashes take place at intersections. Primary safe system interventions for intersections such as redesign and infrastructure construction have proven and significant safety benefits, but can be costly and time consuming to install and there is a long list of intersections to be tackled according to priority. In the meantime, Safe System supporting measures can also dramatically improve safety at intersections and present an opportunity for innovation.  

Irene explained how AT is trialling radars or cameras that detect pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists, at several signalized intersections. Use of this technology for dynamic traffic signals can reduce or remove potential conflicts when vulnerable road users are present, while not stopping vehicle flows unnecessarily at other times. It’s exciting to see the evidence emerging of great safety impacts from these cost-effective innovations.  

While the broader societal understanding of the value of safe and accessible streets for health, environment and the economy may still be a work in progress, these examples highlight how Road Safety Heroes are already achieving positive change one intersection, street, and neighbourhood at a time. 

Great work Irene Tse, Hamish Mackie, Caroline Perry, Ping Sim, and Paul Durdin.  

ACRS members can access a recording of the webinar, and lots of other great ARCS webinars, on YouTube and on the ACRS website in the Webinar Library.