James Laing

Senior Principal Transportation Designer | Stantec

James is an experienced transport designer with a passion for active travel. He moved to Australia in 2018 from Transport for London and has since been applying his knowledge to help improve walking and cycling for clients across Australia.

In his own words he has seen it all when it comes to the designs, the politics, the resistance and the battle to change our culture. He is at the forefront of some of the latest designs you can can see in and around Melbourne and he enjoys helping others develop their skills in this space whilst always seeking opportunities to continue his own learning. He is also a strong advocate of the Healthy Streets approach to planning and design, and this is evident in a lot of his work.

Missing the big picture - A deep dive into micromobilty design

A project brief may ask for gender sensitive design or to design with Country in mind. It may ask for future proofing infrastructure or to align with assessment frameworks such as Healthy Streets. It may ask for inclusive design, yet the honest answer might be, is anything truly inclusive?

If we design a 2m protected bike lane, are we really thinking about how response may impact different genders? How are some people going to feel about being overtaken by an electric cargo delivery bike? Do current designs think about the wide variety of vehicles and speeds that are and will be occupying our cycle lanes? How is a bolt down island (‘hard infrastructure’) considering Country? We live in the skin cancer capital of the world, yet we rarely think about shade. When we do plant trees it is often tokenistic and more often than not concerned with aesthetics rather than functionality.

These questions and more need to be explored if we seriously want to remove the barrier to walking, cycling and use of other micromobilty devices. Many are already asking some of these questions. NACTO, for example, have put a lot of effort into thinking about passing distances with different micromobilty modes. The Healthy Streets approach, which is gaining traction in Australia, demands shade for walking and cycling be considered alongside many other things like places to stop and rest, step free cycling parking and genuinely considering walking in every design.

Clare and James’s presentation will be formed using roleplay with James being the classic design engineer and Clare challenging James on designs. Together they will unpack the mistakes we have made and will continue to make unless we start being honest about our deliverables and educating ourselves to deliver infrastructure that meets local needs and is as inclusive as it can possibly be.

Clare Huggins

Strategic Planner | Stantec

Clare is a strategic planner with experience in transport, planning and sociology. She has specific experience in transport planning, policy and strategy development, monitoring and evaluation, engagement and capacity building.

Through her deep listening and facilitation skills she has formed meaningful relationships to achieve evidence-based and sustainable project outcomes. Clare has delivered projects in varied contexts and excels and creates narratives that align with client and stakeholder expectations.

Missing the big picture - A deep dive into micromobilty design

A project brief may ask for gender sensitive design or to design with Country in mind. It may ask for future proofing infrastructure or to align with assessment frameworks such as Healthy Streets. It may ask for inclusive design, yet the honest answer might be, is anything truly inclusive?

If we design a 2m protected bike lane, are we really thinking about how response may impact different genders? How are some people going to feel about being overtaken by an electric cargo delivery bike? Do current designs think about the wide variety of vehicles and speeds that are and will be occupying our cycle lanes? How is a bolt down island (‘hard infrastructure’) considering Country? We live in the skin cancer capital of the world, yet we rarely think about shade. When we do plant trees it is often tokenistic and more often than not concerned with aesthetics rather than functionality.

These questions and more need to be explored if we seriously want to remove the barrier to walking, cycling and use of other micromobilty devices. Many are already asking some of these questions. NACTO, for example, have put a lot of effort into thinking about passing distances with different micromobilty modes. The Healthy Streets approach, which is gaining traction in Australia, demands shade for walking and cycling be considered alongside many other things like places to stop and rest, step free cycling parking and genuinely considering walking in every design.

Clare and James’s presentation will be formed using roleplay with James being the classic design engineer and Clare challenging James on designs. Together they will unpack the mistakes we have made and will continue to make unless we start being honest about our deliverables and educating ourselves to deliver infrastructure that meets local needs and is as inclusive as it can possibly be.

Damon Rao

Principal Transport Planner | AECOM

Damon is Principal Transport Planner at AECOM in Melbourne. He has over 25 years of experience in State and Local Government in Australia and overseas.

Damon believes that humans are multi modal. As a strategic planner he has worked across a broad range of projects covering car parking to water transport and everything in between.
He recently worked for City of Melbourne (for14 years) where he managed the shared e-scooter and shared e-bike trials. By combining strategy and policy with a hands-on approach he has steered potentially risky projects to success, winning supporters from the unlikeliest of allies along the way.

Melbourne Shared E-Bike and E-Scooter – the experience of local councils and the case for Integrated Transport Planning

In 2022, Victoria launched shared e-scooters in the Cities of Melbourne, Yarra, Port Phillip and Ballarat. This presentation covers how the previous experiences of Melbourne’s blue bikes, and yellow bikes set the foundations for one of the most successful e-scooter programs in the world.

This success occurred while one of the most ambitious programs to deliver protected bike lanes was rolled out during and after successive COVID lockdowns. This presentation gives a brief overview of bike sharing in Melbourne from 2008-2023 and then dives into the introduction of shared e-bikes and e-scooters into a city that has not yet forgotten the days of o-bike.

Presentation includes:

• Inter council coordination for procurement and operator agreements
• Geofencing for no parking, slow and no-go zones.
• Risk management approach including protecting the Yarra River, City Link tunnels and Parks and Gardens
• Trends and patterns from 3 million trips
• Survey insights from e-scooter users, - are they shopping and what would they be doing otherwise?

The VicGov evaluation report should be published by the date of this conference.