“Setting up for success” Transportation Group 2023 award winner

Bridget Carden, Clare Cassidy and Tracy Fleming were thrilled to win awards for “Best Think Piece” and “Best Conference Paper” at the 2023 Transportation Group Conference held 29-31 March in Tauranga.

Aotearoa NZ is experiencing a step change in how we design transport networks. Whilst we are moving from designing for cars to designing for people, the transportation design of many new developments is not reflecting this thinking. With the scale and rate of development occurring nationwide, there is a real risk that the infrastructure being consented today is out of date before it is even constructed. The paper examined some of the reasons why this may be happening and considered how the issues could be overcome at an industry level as well as how individual practitioners might influence positive change.

The paper concluded that as an industry, we need to improve clarity and understanding across multiple sectors involved in new developments to design infrastructure that creates good outcomes for future communities. There is also a need to make mandatory processes more agile to keep pace with rapidly evolving thinking and practices. As practitioners we also have an opportunity to influence and advocate for reform in these areas as well as to promote more recent guidance, such as the pedestrian and cycle network guidance. We can also advocate for better outcomes with our clients and peers, regardless of minimum requirements.

Congratulations also to Jae Morse, who won the award for “Best Abstract” for his road safety presentation on “The Human story: refocusing fatal crash reporting”