The challenges for creating more inclusive journeys

April McCabe

Director, Social Strategy and Engagement | The Planning Studio

April is an experienced urban strategist + social planner with over 20 years experience in Australia, the UK and Ireland for government + private sector. Prior to The Planning Studio, April held senior roles within local government, the private sector and was the Principal Policy Advisor to the Lord Mayor of Sydney, leading a team responsible for advice across the City’s broad policy + operational responsibilities as well as advising on a diverse individual portfolio.
April offers an exceptional understanding and strategic approach to the complex social,
political, cultural and spatial context of cities. She is able to connect the dots between people, places and policy as the foundation of generous, sustainable, and equitable places. April understands the power of storytelling and experiences as a way to shape cities that can be the physical embodiment of those intangible but critical aspects of community and humanity - how we connect, what we value, who is welcome and how we can each have a voice about the future.
April is also a strong advocate for understanding cities through a gender lens and how this influences the experience within places. She is also a leading voice on gender equity within the planning profession and co-authored the first PIA National Gender Equity Policy in 2021.

On the Go: How Women Move around our City

Women often experience unique barriers to active transport. Research undertaken in 2020 for the City of Sydney and C40 Women 4 Climate Initiative - a global organisation - aimed to fill a crucial gap in collecting gender sensitive data and applying a gender lens to urban transport strategies and towards building a more inclusive city. The study investigated how to get more women, who undertake complex trips, to use active transport (walking and cycling) across Greater Sydney by unpacking the key drivers and barriers that are shaping women’s transport choices. This presentation provides a summary of the research, some insights about how breaking down the perception, safety and access barriers for women will create more connected, active transport infrastructure for people of all abilities, ages, backgrounds and why it is important to plan our cities and transport systems through a more inclusive lens.

Dr Jane Bringolf

Chair | Centre for Universal Design Australia

Jane Bringolf is a founding director of Centre for Universal Design Australia, a registered charity. She wants to see a world where designers and policy makers automatically consider the diversity of the population and create inclusive built environments, products, services and ICT. As Liveable Communities Project Manager with Council on the Ageing (COTA NSW), Jane worked with 23 local councils in NSW to create age-friendly communities. She also writes regularly on universal design and inclusive practice and participates in conferences and fora. She has contributed to several advisory panels and working parties promoting inclusive thinking and universal design. Jane’s academic qualifications include a BSSc, MBA and PhD, and she is also a Churchill Fellow. 

Network Planning in Precincts Guide - The strategic design and planning of transport networks to support 15-minute neighbourhoods and 30-minute cities

The Network Planning in Precincts Guide is for transport and land-use practitioners, including practitioners from Transport for NSW, the NSW Department of Planning and Environment, local government, and professionals who are involved in strategic design and planning processes for precincts. It provides best practice principles, tools, examples and case studies of a transport network that facilitates the efficient movement of people and goods while supporting 15-minute neighbourhoods and 30-minute cities, as well as the desired place, safety, public health and wellbeing, environmental and economic outcomes.

The guide adopts the NSW Movement and Place Framework, TfNSW Road User Space Allocation Policy and Safe System approach. It shifts the emphasis in network planning from a hierarchy of roads towards a complete network that is place-based and prioritises walking, cycling, public transport and the safety and comfort of our most vulnerable people.

The guide presents principles for planning and designing a multimodal transport network that integrates land use and transport at a precinct level. 

Janice Lovelock

Senior Engineer | AECOM

Janice is a qualified Chartered Civil engineer,  having graduated from Sydney University in 2009 with 2 Bachelors of Science and B Engineering (Civil) and from University of NSW in 2016 with a Masters in Engineering Science. Janice has worked professionally for consulting companies in the geotechnical engineering and highway engineering fields on major NSW Infrastructure projects and in New Zealand in 2011 as part of the Christchurch Earthquake recovery effort. She currently works for AECOM in the Highways Team. She has a keen interest in engineering from a technical perspective, but an even keener interest in the social benefits engineers can bring to our communities - very much driven by her new perspective as a wheelchair user after sustaining a permanent spinal cord injury in 2019.
Being an engineer, a mother, and a wheelchair user, Janice finds these separate aspects make her experience of the world individual and unique. She believes we have an obligation to consider the experience of diverse members of our community to produce optimal (and inclusive) solutions for all. Believing that building inclusive, accessible, safer and more user-friendly transport infrastructure means a better outcome for all. This is Janice's professional passion, she  wishes to raise awareness in this space, aligning with Engineers Australia Impactful Leadership Strategic Shift outlined in the 2020+3 Vision.

Transport through the lens of an engineer with a mobility disability

So much depends on how we design our transport systems. Effective and safe transport is an enabler for our social wellbeing, our economic vitality, our sense of community and connectedness. However, everybody's transport experience is unique, and the challenge for the engineering discipline is to create a positive experience for all. 

As our Australian Federal, State and Local Governments together with the wider global community advance multi-billion-dollar investments in infrastructure, there are now a multitude of opportunities to correct long-standing social inequalities, one of these being the lack of inclusive transport. To rectify this a greater consideration needs to be made with respect to taking a vulnerable users approach to transport planning - which includes those with living with disabilities. The first step to this approach is understanding that lens.

This aim to rectify social inequality with respect to transport infrastructure, is acknowledged in Australian Government legislation, which requires the provision of accessible services to people with disabilities in a manner which is not discriminatory. Specifically, under the Disability Standards for Accessible Public Transport 2002 (the DSAPT - an instrument of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 ), there is a requirement to modify and develop new infrastructure, means of transport and services to provide access for people with disabilities. But it's often a matter of how we interpret and implement this legislation at a grass roots level that can make the most difference to someone's day to day life. 
Janice explains transport through her new lens of being a wheelchair user. Different spatial and social barriers can more readily hinder her ability to travel, serving to isolate from the economic, political, and social life of the community. Only by understanding different vulnerable end user perspectives can universal design be achieved to create transport usable by people of all abilities.

According to the United Nations Convention on the rights of Persons with disabilities, people with disabilities include "those who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments, which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others". This importantly provides the view that people with disabilities as not being disabled by their impairments, but rather by barriers that prevent them gaining equal access to transport (amongst other services). If we understand the barriers we create, we can remove them collectively - effectively removing disability from the equation altogether.

Annalie Boston

Senior Transport Planner | Arup

Annalie Boston is a transport planner who loves nothing better than to listen to her children sing songs while riding her e-cargo bike. Her initial ambition as a civil engineer was to eradicate traffic congestion. In the intermediate 18 years she has primarily worked to improve operational performance of public transport networks while promoting equitable access through major transport developments. 
Nothing could have prepared her for the congestion caused by a stormy school run. Afterall, who would be mad enough to travel between 8:30 and 9am? Anyone who has ever had young children, that's who. Her latest ambition is to empower kids and their parents to develop long lasting travel habits that benefit their mental and physical health and support cleaner, greener communities (and eradicating traffic congestion). While not planning how to improve transport networks, she is the President of the Bondi Toy Library. 

Empowering kids for a happier, healthier and more efficient school run

Humans are creatures of habit. From a transport perspective, arguably the most transformative stage of life is having children through to first years of school. During this time, women's transport needs in particular, evolve from being independent, time rich and self-sufficient - ie someone who can chose how they want to travel, when they want and where they want - to having strict school drop off and pick up times, handling the equivalent of a raging Tasmanian devil, while every other parent is doing the same on top of maintaining an appearance of control. This is neither a recipe for stress-free travel nor indeed a safe environment. 
While transport networks are increasingly designed to enable modal choice through more cycle lanes, safer streets and more pedestrian crossings, it is often the tried and tested habit, driving a car, that becomes the default school run mode. Perceptions of convenience through known and expected delay times, managed safety risks and individualised travel plans often outweigh the longer-term impacts to children and missing the potential benefits other options may provide. Relatively minimal organisation could flip the school run from parent-centric to a community-based approach that has wide reaching benefits. If only parents knew! 
This presentation summarises an approach to communicating an holistic framework of resources that improves communities cities through transport, education, health and technology by promoting happier school runs. The purpose is to focus school communities' attention to the full range of options open to them that cumulatively improve all aspects of the school run. The outcome is to empower kids to shape their long-term travel habits.