Creating Streets for People

Zarin Salter, Department of Transport - WA Safe Active Streets Program - Creating Safer, Active Streets for Everyone

Zarin Salter

Senior Evaluation Program Officer | Department of Transport

Zarin Salter is the Senior Evaluation Program Officer in the Active Transport branch of the WA Department of Transport. Zarin leads the planning and management of two high-priority evaluation projects for the Cycling Team - the Principal Shared Path Key Investment Projects Evaluation and the Safe Active Streets Pilot Program Evaluation. 

Co-Author(s):

Caroline Elliot | Department of Transport

Caroline Elliott is the Coordinator Strategic Projects and Programs in the Active Transport branch of the WA Department of Transport. Caroline coordinates the Safe Active Streets Program across all areas of design, planning, cost estimating, project management, and guideline development.

Caroline has over 30 year's experience in the field of transportation planning in a variety of roles in local and State governments both in the United Kingdom and Western Australia.

WA Safe Active Streets Program - Creating Safer, Active Streets for Everyone

The Safe Active Streets (SAS) Program is a Department of Transport (DoT) initiative which seeks to address a key barrier to bike riding in Western Australia (WA); the perceived lack of safety on local roads. The purpose of a SAS is to establish a safer, quieter and more attractive road environment that encourages people of all ages and abilities to choose bike riding or walking over the private car. The speed limit is reduced to 30km/hr with street modification using a variety of cycle friendly design elements with prioritised intersections to form a continuous and connected route as part of the wider bicycle network for people of all ages and abilities. Whilst relatively new to Perth, safe active streets are used widely around the world and are also known as neighbourhood greenways, bike boulevards or quiet streets.  

The SAS Program consists of a pilot phase, which has been comprehensively evaluated, as well as an ongoing grant-based program to support the delivery of safe active street infrastructure by local government into the future. The nine SAS project routes included in the Pilot Program are being evaluated with lessons and insights to be used to guide future SAS design and delivery in WA. The evaluation has been designed to derive key insights from data relating to the design features and treatments applied, user behaviour and community perceptions. A combination of quantitative (pneumatic tube counts and video surveys) and qualitative data (community perception surveys) have been used to obtain the required information set out in the SAS Evaluation Plan. 

This presentation will provide an update and discussion of the key evaluation findings to date and lessons learned, and the status of the final report and future projects being planned. One key highlight is a consistent finding that increased pedestrian and cycling numbers are observed on SAS routes where carriageway widths are altered, and treatments applied every 80-100m.

Annabel Keegan, Phil Jones Associates - Streets for a Healthy Life

Annabel Keegan

Transport Planner | Phil Jones Associates

Annabel is a qualified transport planner and urban designer with a background in architecture. She has over 20 years of practical experience specialising in the delivery of design-led projects both within the public and private sector.

Co-Author(s): 

Tim Judd | Phil Jones Associates

A co-presenter for designing for healthy streets in Australia, Tim has 20 years experience within the transport planning and street design sector

Streets for a Healthy Life

Working alongside Homes England, PJA and Design for Homes collated examples of good practice in UK street design to illustrate and explain what good streets look like, and how they function. A number of case studies were investigated in the compilation of the document. Examples included were chosen because they represent good practice in the street typology illustrated.  

The guide builds on the recommendations set out in Manual for Streets that designers develop street character types based on a location specific basis with reference to the relevant functions of each street. The purpose of this guide is not to define rigid street typologies which are based on traffic flows and/or the number of buildings served.

Using photographic examples street character types are built up from individual street elements (e.g. carriageway, footway, cycle route, SuDS) and considering their relationship with the buildings and spaces that frame the street.

This guide provides a set of best practice case studies that have been proven successful and which incorporate patterns of development and materials that should be transferable to multiple locations.  This is the essence of this guide, to break down the composition of successful streets by identifying their dimensions, geometry, and choice of materials. This is especially relevant now that many adoption authorities are having to make difficult choices about what they can afford to maintain. 

Erin Jackson, GHD Pty Ltd - Unlocking urban opportunities through transport network planning

Erin Jackson

Smart Transport Solutions Lead | GHD Pty Ltd

Erin has been delivering innovative transport projects for her clients for over 18 years across the fields of traffic engineering, transport planning, and project management. With a Master's degree in Traffic Engineering through Monash University, Erin is a Technical Director and leader within GHD's transport team. 

Co-Author(s): 

Samantha Chapman | GHD

Samantha Chapman, an innovative Transport Engineer and Project Manager (PM), joined GHD's Tasmanian business in 2016. She is an Engineer with experience in the management and options development for civil infrastructure projects within Tasmania. She completed Civil Engineering at University of Tasmania (UTAS) and undertook honours research in partnership with GHD and Department of State Growth on the Impact of Inner-City Parking on the Hobart Road Network using mesoscopic modelling.

Her experience includes everything from assessment of major infrastructure projects through to highway corridor planning and funding applications, investment logic mapping, scenario modelling and feasibility and options analysis, as well as community and stakeholder engagement.

Samantha is currently part of a core team leading part of GHD's global Future Communities initiative, investigating the benefits of integrated multi-modal transport planning in unlocking urban opportunities. Samantha is passionate about taking a whole-of-project rather than focusing solely on business or technical components and believes most value can be seen by integrating tools such as traffic modelling within the greater project, connecting to broader transport planning and traffic engineering principles.

Andrew Metge | GHD

Unlocking urban opportunities through transport network planning

There are enormous opportunities for the growth and transformation of Australian urban centres and the key to managing this well is supporting the cities and towns to evolve at the same time as protecting what makes them unique. However, if we are to meet our goals of creating liveable, smart, safe and sustainable communities then we must take greater control of planning, managing, designing and operating our transport networks, protecting places for people, and ensuring that investment is aligned with strategic goals and is being realised at street level. 

Traditional methods available to engineers and designers often result in the impact on road traffic (i.e. cars, trucks and on-street parking) being the primary concerns for the basis of decision making.  As a result, the benefits of any proposal that challenges the status quo and seeks to reallocate road space towards other travel modes can be difficult to justify. The increasing complexity of evaluating transport networks and reallocating road space to other uses can lead to decision making uncertainty and sometimes a failure for urban transformation projects to be implemented at all. 

The presentation will explore strategies that work together to enable a successful outcome including undertaking strategic network planning. However, given the complexity of the issue, it is not a surprise that the solution equally needs an intricate, personalised and collaborative process.

This presentation is a relevant topic for Government transport agencies, road owners, and operators, as well as transport, planning and urban design practitioners, as this issue is one that impacts on all aspects of the urban environment regardless of location. 

Bright Pryde, Aurecon - Achieving a well-designed built environment: NSW Movement and Place Built Environment Indicators

Bright Pryde

Lead Consultant | Aurecon

Bright is a Lead Transport Planner at Aurecon with over a decade of experience in the built environment sector in Australia and the UK. With a background in transport/land use policy and urbanism, Bright has led and contributed to major infrastructure projects and strategic frameworks. 

Co-Author (s):

Ben Cebuliak | Transport NSW

Ben Cebuliak has worked as an urban planner within the public, private and research sectors at the federal, state and local levels in both Australia and Canada. 

Ben is the Manager Movement and Place at Transport for NSW. Ben previously led the NSW Active Transport team and worked across government agencies, with councils and bicycle users to deliver on the NSW Government's commitments for cycling and walking in NSW. 

Before joining the NSW State Government, Ben was involved in drafting the airport planning component of the National Aviation White Paper, the National Urban Policy, the Australian Urban Design Protocol, three State of Australian Cities reports and a national policy statement on walking, riding and access to public transport.

Achieving a well-designed built environment: NSW Movement and Place Built Environment Indicators

The NSW Movement and Place Framework has established a set of 36 built environment performance indicators for evaluating Movement and Place projects. The indicators are based on qualities that contribute to a well-designed built environment and are grouped under five themes relating to user outcomes. The user outcomes reflect what a person may reasonably expect as an outcome of good performance related to that theme.

Access and Connection: transport choice, reliable transport and equity (of access)

Amenity and Use: convenient facilities and local opportunities

Green and Blue: a link to nature

Comfort and Safety: a comfortable environment, that is low risk

Character and Form: a place that is human-scaled, that celebrates its distinct features

The built environment themes, outcomes, and 36 indicators provide a consistent framework for assessing movement and place performance across a wide range of projects or plans. 

This topic would be of interest for a national audience as Movement and Place Frameworks are cropping up all over the country and the world. They are versatile and depend on high levels of collaboration, and force practitioners to think differently about their projects. The NSW Movement and Place Framework is one of the more developed frameworks in Australia and the BEIs is a new way of measuring performance of our networks and places. In this session, we will share learnings and experience that other jurisdictions can draw on to develop and refine similar frameworks to support the development of better places and streets to serve our communities.