andysmith's blog

Talking, walking, seeing fall colours and catching up with friends and family - what's not to like about a visit to North America in September?
 

We started with the grand official opening of the Banff Commonwealth Walkway. It physically links several paths around this Rocky Mountain City. Virtually there is a link to other Commonwealth countries including our own capital where the markers were finished last year. I was moved by the indigenous welcome from Siksika Nation elder Tom Crane Bear.  
 

New Zealand’s road toll is too high. On a per capita basis it is double that of the UK, and among the highest in the world - alongside Cambodia, Malaysia, Lithuania and Slovenia.

Download this report from Victoria Walks (Australia) on how we can improve roads to make pedestrians safer.

See section 4 for the list of solutions. These will help all road users.

http://www.victoriawalks.org.au/Safer_Road_Design/

-

We have recently released the report Benchmarking Cycling and Walking in Six New Zealand Cities. This report compares Auckland, Tauranga, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin for important inputs (e.g. funding, policies, infrastructure)  and outputs (e.g. extent of walking and cycling, population health and safety) with regards to active transport.  The report and supplementary material are available here:  http://sustainablecities.org.nz/resilient-urban-futures/benchmarking/

Meanwhile, this just in from the "New Zealand history and natural heritage" Facebook page.

Line down the centre of the footpath.
From 1923 until the 1970s there was a bylaw requiring pedestrians to keep left on the major throughfares of the inner city.
The footpaths were painted with lines to facilitate this until the bylaw wasabolished in the early 1970s.
The elimination of the bylaw was due to the dramatic drop in the number of pedestrians in the inner city becuase so many daytime shoppers were favouring suburban malls.

There have been a few such reports circulating around the Tweet sphere which starts to make it seem like a real problem.

Streetsblog have done a good job on some arguments against it - one 'survey' was done that used spurious data.

http://www.streetsblog.org/2016/03/31/inside-the-latest-distracted-pedestrians-con/#.Vv88AfVoMHk.twitter

The Wellington Meeting series. June 23 and 24

Ellen Blake and I (AndySmith) started the day at the AA with Mike Noon. The AA have a great number of members and can survey for opinions. I was interesting to hear his opinion on our Law Change and hope one day to have the AA member surveyed on it.

We need more statistics on walking. Who out there can help us with that?

Andy Smith and Ellen Blake from the LSA exec have committed themselves to a week of meetings. Monday started with an LSA strategy meeting with Mike Mellor at the railway station.

Then it was off to the NZ Police and Superintendent Steve Greally who is the Manager Road Policing. We talked about our yellow feet, proposed law change and Vision Zero for road deaths.

The attached study on a sample of Wellington walkways was published today in the NZ Medical Journal. It shows that while lighting of street-connecting walkways at night is generally good – there was a quarter of walkways where it was inadequate (ie, it was too dark to see your feet or to see the steps).

In the “Discussion” section of the attached – various options for improving things are outlined, in case the Council wishes to consider these.

Hope this is of interest.

Nick Wilson