Marion Guesnier

Principal Transport Planner | Arcadis Australia

Marion is a Principal Transport Planner at Arcadis. She is passionate about fostering innovation and contributing to the development of environmentally sustainable and inclusive transport services.

She leads and manages the development of transport plans, strategies, and options assessment. Her project experience includes a range of transport modes and analyses. She has worked on rail planning, public transport network optimisation, active transport, new mobility services and risk and performance projects. She has also managed the development of innovative tools and applications for both transport planning practitioners and passenger services.

With 8 years’ experience in transport planning and optimising performance for transport systems in different transport environments including Australia, Europe, Middle East, and the United States, she can empathise with local strategic and operational constraints and bring new thinking and good practice suggestions to help shape more resilient and sustainable mobility solutions in Australia.

The First and Last Mile pathway: completing end-to-end transit journeys

City-shaping transit services can be the most impactful option to achieve a modal shift from private cars, while enhancing precinct placemaking. In Melbourne, Suburban Rail Loop will serve high volumes of passengers and enable people of all abilities to move between existing and future centres more efficiently. To maximise benefits, the new services should be accessible to a wider community than only people living and working within a short distance to stations.

With stations located a few kilometres apart from each other, how can the number of people willing and able to access the new transit services be maximised?

This presentation will illustrate why systematic investment in passenger journeys to and from mass transit services – called First and Last Mile – needs to be prioritised to better connect people in Australian large, medium and small centres. It will give an overview of the solutions and strategies that can address this challenge, from high-level policies to specific public and active transport services (existing and futures). It will focus on the coordinated planning, design and implementation of these options, which involve both public and private stakeholders.

The presentation will draw on findings from the First Last Mile planning guidelines developed by Arcadis IBI. Developed for Los Angeles Metro, a highly car-dependent and spread-out region, they are relevant to many Australian cities, including the Suburban Rail Loop and Melbourne’s ‘missing middle’ issues. The ‘Pathway’ concept, used to design First Last Mile solutions, while supporting land use and transport integration, will be presented along with a toolbox and proven methodology that helped develop layouts of access networks to train and transit stations to maximise ridership.

Findings from Australia, America and Europe will be compared, leveraging on project experience on the Los Angeles First Last Mile Strategy and French Transport Hub Studies including the Grand Paris Express.

Neil France

Senior Infrastructure Advisor | Infrastructure Victoria

Neil is a Senior Infrastructure Advisor within Infrastructure Victoria’s Networks & Planning team.

At Infrastructure Victoria, Neil has worked on both policy and project assessment with experience in road pricing, public transport fare reform and strategic analysis of major transport infrastructure. He also led research looking into Melbourne’s recovery from the impacts of COVID-19, and was lead author of Infrastructure Victoria’s latest research, Get on board - making the most of Melbourne’s buses.

Neil holds a Bachelor of Civil Engineering (Honours) and Bachelor of Architectural Design from Monash University. In 2019, Neil was recognised as part of the Australian Financial Review’s Top 100 Future Leaders award.

Making the most of Melbourne's buses

Infrastructure Victoria’s latest research identifies many of the challenges across Melbourne’s bus system and highlights the enormous opportunity to make more of Melbourne’s 400+ bus routes through bus reform.
Our research identifies some of the reasons behind Melbourne’s underused bus services:

• Buses are rarely a competitive alternative to cars and other transport. Low frequencies, limited operating hours, and slow and complex routes make buses a less appealing alternative.
• Customers find using the bus difficult and complex. People who do take the bus often face limited real-time information, a lack of quality stop infrastructure, safety concerns, and unreliable service levels.
• The existing bus network is inequitable. Access to safe, reliable and affordable transport gives more Melbournians the opportunity to participate in work, attend social events and study.
• Victorians can get better value from the bus network. The Victorian Government spends about $800 million every year on the metropolitan bus network, yet some communities see limited benefit.

These identified challenges are not unique to Melbourne. Across the world, cities like Auckland (NZ) and Houston (USA) have recognised the significant benefits that flow on from bus reform.

Our research suggests there are many opportunities to reform the existing network to benefit customers, ease congestion and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, building on the improvements already underway as part of Victoria’s bus plan. We have also investigated the preferences and perceptions of Melburnians to ensure we understand what the community values and the trade-offs they are willing to make for bus reform.

Without changes to travel habits – including choosing buses and ultimately zero-emissions buses – the impacts of climate change are also likely to significantly disrupt the entire transport network.

Stephen Loughnan

Senior Strategic Rail Planner | WSP

Stephen is a Senior Strategic Rail Planner in WSP’s WA Strategic Rail Planning Team. He has a breadth of experience in delivering projects in the early planning phase for rail, mid-tier and road projects in WA over the past 6 years. He is passionate about developing sustainable public transport solutions that facilitate transit orientated development, creating and activating precincts for people to enjoy. Stephen advocates for balanced and integrated design solutions and is excited about the opportunities that new technologies will bring in both the planning and operations of public transport.

Mid-tier Transport- where are we now and where are we going? 

Mid-tier transport plays a crucial role in bridging the gap between the heavy rail network and bus network, intended to provide reliable, frequent, efficient mass transit options for people. With the emergence of new technology focused around carbon reduction including ZEBs and TTs there is opportunity to rethink what mid-tier transit could look like in the future.

By interrogating existing mid-tier solutions nationally and globally we have established what we believe are the top 5 features that make for a successful mid-tier network.

This lends itself to the question: what is next for mid-tier in Australia, and how can we incorporate new and emerging processes and technologies into our planning to create more efficient and sustainable public transport options?

Nicole Badstuber

Associate Director | AECOM

Nicole currently works as an Associate Director in transport planning and policy for engineering consultants AECOM in Sydney. In this role she currently leads on inclusive design, including AECOM’s research on women’s safety when travelling. She worked on cycling projects in Sydney and Canberra and has reviewed active travel work across ANZ. Nicole has recently applied findings from the AECOM Safe Places Survey to city-shaping transport infrastructure project, like Canberra Light Rail. This has included applying a gender-sensitive urban design lens for the project and infrastructure design and working closely with Major Project Canberra at seeing gender sensitive urban design features continued in operation.

Prior to her current role, Nicole was Mobility Programme Director at urban policy think tank Committee for Sydney. Before moving to Australia in 2020, Nicole was an academic researcher and visiting lecturer based in London with recent affiliations to University College London, University of Westminster and University of Cambridge.

Designing public transport spaces for all: applying gender sensitive urban design principles to the Canberra Light Rail extension

One in four women in Australia does not walk alone in her local neighbourhood after dark because of safety – vs only 4% of men. Women are less likely to wait for or use public transport after dark because of safety. Women are less likely to use public transport at all because of feeling unsafe.

Gender sensitive urban design (GSUD) recognises that people experience public spaces differently. Gendered experiences of navigating and moving through spaces impact feelings of vulnerability. This creates barriers to access and contributes to inequality for women and gender diverse people. Applying this lens to design and lighting of spaces highlights areas for improvement, and addressing these shortcomings creates safer and more welcoming spaces for all.

What makes places safe or unsafe? How can we design safer public transport for all? This presentation captures the first application of GSUD to a large Australian infrastructure project, Canberra Light Rail extension, and provides insight into the process of mainstreaming gender sensitivity as a design consideration. This city-shaping transport project in the ACT coordinated a multidisciplinary effort to incorporate recent research on GSUD into practical project development. The presentation will cover the conditions that enabled spearheading inclusive design and the concrete steps which are facilitating design incorporation in the current stage of network expansion.

The speaker team presenting client and consultant side, Carrell Hambrick from Major Projects Canberra and Nicole Badstuber from AECOM, will outline how GSUD is being applied on the project and how this can influence better outcomes for future transport network expansion in Canberra. They will discuss lessons learnt to apply in the ACT and on other and future transport infrastructure and placemaking projects.