Stephanie Crossley

Founding Director | Crossley Transport Planning

Stephanie is an Oxford University graduate & the founding director of Crossley Transport Planning current leading the way in place-based transport planning. She is piloting new tools & techniques to help objectively quantify deficits in "good design" at a precinct, neighbourhood & street scale. She has developed the application of Movement & Place and Healthy Streets into all types of transport related projects including traffic impact assessments, corridor plans, place strategies and modal strategies.

Transport: The Prism to Understanding Our Cities

The wicked problems our communities face include sedentary lifestyles, injuries, exposure to noise and air pollution and community severance which emerge within our transport system. Subsequently, how we design our transport network plays a vital role in overcoming these issues.

We take you on a journey through two case studies to demonstrate tools and approaches which can support people-first transport planning practices and how to measure the wider community benefits. The lenses used include the NSW Movement and Place Framework, and the Healthy Streets approach. The approaches work in tandem to empower transport planners and engineers to undertake multiscale assessments of places for the benefit of people and communities alike.

Case Study 1: For the first case study, we take you to Tamworth which is a typical regional town with the aspirations to become a people-first and place-driven community within the north-western region of New South Wales. Our mission was to investigate opportunities to connect the riverside and its parklands to the existing high streets within the CBD and to celebrate its cultural identity.

Case Study 2: For the second case study, we take you to Burwood located within the heart of Greater Sydney. Burwood Road is a busy high street where people live, shop, eat out, socialise and stay within the suburb’s centre. The introduction of the new metro station and the local population’s heavy reliance on public transport presents an opportunity to expand the high street’s function as a gateway to public transport to the surrounding network. We explored different ways to make places between the public transport hub on Burwood Road and the wider community more attractive for people to walk, ride and access public transport.

Matthew Raisbeck

Principal Transport Planner | Infrastructure Victoria

Matthew is a skilled transport planner who has over 17 years’ experience in the transport industry across consulting and government in Victoria. He has experience in developing business cases, transport investments, policy settings and evaluation frameworks and managed transport modelling, planning and investment projects across regional towns and centres and in capital cities. He is currently the Principal Transport Planner at Infrastructure Victoria, though led this project as the Stantec Project Manager, and as such, the work does not represent IV’s work or views.

Matthew was Principal Transport Planner at Stantec and its predecessor GTA from 2017 to 2023. He led the demand forecasting team at Public Transport Victoria from 2010 to 2017, and before 2010 he was a data analyst and survey manager at DoT. He has a Bachelor of Business and Information Systems. He has previously presented papers at AITPM and ATRF conferences on rail station planning.

More than a bus: How to break car dependency to Major Activity Centres

Chadstone Shopping Centre is one of Australia’s largest mixed use retail centres. However, public transport access is challenging as it isn’t directly accessible by train. While it is well-serviced by multiple bus routes on weekdays, service frequency drops significantly on weekends and public holidays when staff and visitor demand is at its highest. Long waiting times result in bus crowding, passengers being left behind and people choosing to drive instead if they have that choice.

Solving this issue required a complex series of steps including service funding and private sector collaboration with state government and the transport operator. This paper outlines the options, approval processes, implementation steps, impacts and lessons learnt, and the implications for other busy locations with a mix of uses.

Following the optioneering, the preferred solution involved a collaboration between Stantec and Vicinity Centres (the managers of Chadstone) to run a Vicinity-funded shuttle bus service from Oakleigh Train Station to Chadstone building on the existing bus services. “Turn-up-and-go” services operated from October to January, with an even higher-frequency service in place for the busiest shopping period – including a 5-minute frequency on Boxing Day. When the shuttle was in operation, this resulted in an average wait time of less than 10 minutes, 7 days a week.

The successful shuttle service has operated for over four years over the busy summer period and carried over 100,000 passengers and is an example of Victoria’s Bus Plan in action, which aims to deliver a sustainable and efficient network and increase bus patronage. In 2022 the service was expanded to a second infill shuttle service to provide wider connectivity. These services demonstrate the potential for shuttle buses to facilitate connections between rail and activity centres, leverage existing infrastructure and reduce car dependency while supporting sustainable travel choices and communities.

Andrew Morse

Managing Director | ptc.

Andrew is a skilled Traffic Engineer with more than 3 decades of experience in the industry. He's a member of the AITPM and is a co-author of the AS2890 suite of Australian Standards, making him a respected and knowledgeable expert in the field. Andrew began his career as a Civil Engineering Technician with Arup in Bristol, UK, before specializing in Traffic Engineering when he joined Pinnacle Transportation in 1998. In 1999, he relocated to Sydney, where he has been working as a Traffic Engineer since 2000.

Andrew's dedication and expertise have earned him many accolades in the industry, and in recognition of his achievements was promoted to the position of Managing Director of ptc. after 10 years serving as a director. Andrew is also a respected expert witness in the Land & Environment Court of NSW, where his experience and knowledge have been instrumental in helping clients to achieve favourable outcomes.

 

 

Active Transport versus Car Parking

Our inner-city areas are seeing somewhat of a struggle between competing ideals. Government is pressing for 15, 20, 30-minute cities and planning controls are allowing greater development yields around transport hubs. This is all moving the right direction, but a missing piece is an effort to affect mode shift away from car usage and towards active travel.

Sure, most large developments are required to provide a green travel plan, which are well intentioned in their outcomes, but if the underlying fundamentals are not addressed in the physical world, the goals would be rarely achieved.

Adopting a carrot and stick approach can work to some extent, e.g. make driving expensive and difficult, while providing excellent facilities for the other modes. History tells us that the stick is often used (toll roads, short parking restrictions and high parking costs), but sans orange root vegetables. Again, this is getting better with new cycle paths in some areas and more focus on movement and place occurring. While there are some funding mechanisms in place to capture input from developments, we could do more to change the development model.

In my presentation I want to explore the simple notion of diverting the construction cost associated with parking (typically in expensive basements) and turning that into funding for public upgrades. Not wishing to ignore the developer's feasibility p rocess as this needs to be considered, there is a fundamental shift in attitude towards car ownership and usage, with car share, ride share and the micromobility world increasing in availability. This may be resulting in a future reduced demand for parking at the place of residence, particularly when you add housing affordability to the mix.

Developments that capture this change should be able to benefit from incentives (increased FSR / height, a more rapid approval process etc.) in order to reduce parking and provide a contribution or undertake the works within the public domain (beyond the threshold of the site). This would involve a change to planning controls in many areas, but would couple mode share shift, density and improved public amenity in one hit.

My presentation would present data to support, or at least test this idea, discussions with Council’s developers and other professional within the transport field. I may not be able to answer the question, but the conference should be able to ask these questions and have them probed by our community.