Active Transport Users

Lisa Steinmetz, O'Brien Traffic, Design options to improve active transport connections - and what stakeholders think of them

Lisa Steinmetz

O'Brien Traffic

Lisa has over 20 years of experience in traffic and road safety engineering. She joined O'Brien Traffic in 2019 as a Senior Traffic Engineer after 17 years with the Australian Road Research Board. Her career has encompassed research, evaluation and risk assessment projects focussed on improving safety on state and local government roads as well as improving safety for pedestrians and cyclists.

Lisa's career has spanned a number of diverse areas including managing and contributing to national research projects, provision of expert advice in road safety engineering (including Safe System road infrastructure, design and implementation, risk assessment, speed management and engineering guidance development), traffic management, road design and local government placements. In more recent years, Lisa has designed and undertaken a number of local government traffic and road safety studies and evaluations, prepared small and large-scale traffic impact assessments and contributed to numerous road safety audits and Safe System Assessments.

Lisa is motivated by the aim of helping deliver safe roads that also meet the mobility, amenity, accessibility and environmental needs of the community

Co-Author(s)

Chris Hui | Whitehorse City Council

Chris Hui is a Strategic Transport Planner at Whitehorse City Council. He has worked in the local government sector in Melbourne for 14 years in the areas of travel behaviour change, road safety education and transport planning, with a focus on walking and cycling.

Matt Harridge | O'Brien Traffic

Matt is a Director at O' Brien Traffic and has over 20 years of experience in traffic engineering and transport planning acquired in both the public and private sectors. Matt has considerable experience in Municipal Traffic Engineering, cycling and walking network planning and design and community consultation.

Design options to improve active transport connections - and what stakeholders think of them

Whitehorse City Council are looking into future changes along key transport links within Box Hill to support the community's evolving transport needs. Nelson Road is an important active transport corridor providing connection and access to the Health and Education precincts, the city centre and public transport hub, residential and hotel developments, and also recreational spaces.

Recognising the growing walking and cycling demands, the Nelson Road corridor study investigated opportunities for improving pedestrian and cyclist safety. Design options were generated for a wide range of walking and cycling abilities, which could also facilitate incremental infrastructure changes in order to coordinate and align with other projects taking place in Box Hill. A wide range of stakeholders were involved at different stages, each providing a different perspective.

This presentation reports on the various options generated and the different perspectives of stakeholders and in the end, how stakeholder inputs were adopted or managed.

Ten-Zen Guh, Mott MacDonald, Pedestrian Design Good Practice

Ten-Zen Guh

Mott MacDonald, Technical Director - Transport Planning

Ten-Zen is a transport planner and New York state professional engineer with a specialisation in pedestrian planning and modelling. He has over 15 years of experience working on major government and private sector infrastructure projects across Australia, Asia, North America, and South America. He has led pedestrian planning and modelling on major NSW projects including Sydney Metro Western Sydney Airport and Redfern Station New Southern Concourse.

Ten-Zen's input helped challenge the traditional paradigm of car-oriented planning in order to enhance walkability in-line with Transport for NSW's desired modal hierarchy and strategic transport objectives. Internationally he has delivered pedestrian planning and modelling projects for major transport agencies including City Rail Link in Auckland, SEPTA in Philadelphia, and Singapore LTA.

Pedestrian Design Good Practice

Despite recent messaging from governments across Australia to improve active transport outcomes, street and road design is often still dictated by outdated design guidelines which prioritise vehicle movements over other modes.

Complementing Ten-Zen's presentation at the recent National Conference on a performance-based approach to improving pedestrian connectivity, this presentation provides some prescriptive rule-of-thumb guidance on the nuts-and-bolts of pedestrian infrastructure with the aim to help practitioners make better street design decisions.

Neil Edgar, City of Moreton Bay Council - Reducing Road Safety Risk in Australia's 3rd Largest Council Area

Neil Edgar

City of Moreton Bay Council - Team Leader

Neil Edgar is a Team Leader for the Transport Engineering team at City of Moreton Bay and a Registered Professional Engineer Queensland. Neil is a highly experienced transport and road safety engineer and has devoted much of his career to reducing road safety risk on UK and Australian roads.

Neil is a former Director for Safer Roads at the Department of Transport and Main Roads in Queensland and Senior Engineer at Sunshine Coast Council where he was responsible for the local roads upgrade program.

Prior to moving to Australia, Neil undertook senior roles as Road Safety Manager and Traffic & Transportation Manager at the former Cheshire County Council and Wigan Council respectively. He is strong advocate of the Safe Systems approach to road safety improvement and the network-wide assessment of safety risk to identify priorities for capital works road upgrades. 

Co-Author(s)

Aaron Lewis | City of Moreton Bay Council

Aaron is a Principal Engineer for the Transport Engineering team at City of Moreton Bay. A passionate road safety advocate, he is currently responsible for the development and implementation of the road safety projects and programs within the City’s region including black spot identification and mitigation, crash data analysis, road safety auditing and safety risk assessment. Aaron has been integral in developing the City of Moreton Bay’s Transport Safety Plan, with particular interest in utilising technology and innovation in the form of crash prediction tools to identify and mitigate potential crash locations proactively. Aaron’s previous roles include investigation of traffic and road safety issues raised by Councillors and the community.

Reducing Road Safety Risk in Australia's 3rd Largest Council Area

The former Moreton Bay Regional Council in Queensland achieved City status in July 2023 and was renamed City of Moreton Bay. The City’s current population is greater than Canberra and forecast to increase 484,428 in 2021 to 796,515 in 2046. By 2031, the City’s population will be greater than Tasmania’s. Despite ongoing investment in active and public transport infrastructure to encourage mode shift, the population increase will see more vehicle kilometres being travelled on the City's roads and with that comes the increased risk of crashes and casualties. This presentation will describe some of Council's key road safety initiatives including the development of a new Transport Safety Plan and use of technology to analyse road user behaviour.