Good, Bad and Interesting things about Adelaide Transport

Presenting a paper at this year's Australian Transport Research Forum in Adelaide has provide a chance to sample that city's public transport. Here's four good, four bad and four interesting points based on observation.

The good

Go Zones. Frequent service corridors covering most inner suburbs out to about 10km from the CBD. They are extensively advertised at stops, on timetables and at the Metro Shop.

Airport accesss on regular services. J1 and J2 provide a 15 minute service 7 days a week. Service spans are very wide, with service starting before 5am even on a Sunday morning. The profile of the service is quite high - airport staff recognise the numbers and the information desk is well stocked with timetables.

Rail electrification. Project includes several new and rebuilt stations, sighted on the Noralunga line.

Glenelg tram. New extension is well patronised. It also serves major trip generators including a university, convention centre and hospital under construction.

Bad

Pedestrian crossings. Imagine a journey where after a couple of minutes travel you stopped, were paused 2 minutes, could lurch forward a few hundred metres and stopped again. This is walking in Adelaide. Long traffic light cycles at CBD intersections reduce overall walking speeds to a crawl. In the suburbs islands and seperate signals (for each direction) at divided roads further slow transfer between train and bus. The Melbourne equivalent would be if every intersection had traffic light cycles like King Street.

Infrequent trains. Unlike Melbourne or Perth, where trains form the most frequent 'spine' of the network, train frequencies are often 30 to 60 minutes, making recourse to a timetable essential.

Low bus network legibility. It is difficult for the visitor to see the logic of the bus network. If you board a bus in a CBD street you cannot be assured it will continue straight along it. There is a large number of route numbers, with various letter and number prefixes and suffixes. Buses are significantly less legible than trams in Melbourne, but there are no inherent reasons for this to be the case.

Few maps on the network. Compounding limited legibility is that while many bus stops have times, few have maps of either the route or network. The only place where there's a city-wide network map appears to be inside the Metro Shop. Go Zone network maps are similarly available on the web but not at the point of need on the system. Maps of individual routes don't seem to be nearly as common as (say) Melbourne.

Interesting

Ticket purchase on trains. Instead of at machines at stations.

Can see to the front on trains. Most systems' trains only allow passengers to see out the sides of a train. With at least some of Adelaides you can also see out the front. This gives a quite different view of the network.

Single zone tickets. The liability is a high minimum fare, though there is a cheaper short-distance ticket. The advantage is simplicity. The ratio between single and daily ticket is not dissimilar to Melbourne, making a daily tickets a good choice.

Stops are numbered. The acid test of a public transport system's legibility is whether people can find themselves to a destination at night. Large numbers on stops are viewable from the bus, so can help if trying to ascertain where you are (printed timetables refer to these numbers against timepoints). On the flip side timetables are not stop specific - they are instead full timetables where the passenger must estimate arrival times for themselves.

Why even culs-de-sac with walkways are bad

There's been some debate on culs-de sacs. We all know they're terrible for pedestrian permeability.

But is providing a walkway at the end of them a panacea? Some have suggested that this provides the best of both worlds - safety for children due to the removal of through car traffic - and permeability for pedestrians.

While better than culs-de-sac without end walkways, they present some problems. Overall I think they're inferior to a grid streets (with narrowing and traffic calming where necessary).

I give five reasons why in my response to the previous link:

1. Opportunities for graffiti/vandalism. Cul de sacs create blank side fences. These are a canvas to vandals. Urban design that minimises these is good (for the same reason there should always be verges, roads and then houses facing railways – never back fences).

2. Poor passive surveillance compared to a continuous street with house frontages. Increase opportunities for vandalism and assaults against pedestrians. Criminals think they can ‘get away’ with more if there are no sightlines.

3. Low information and legibility. Walkways are less prominent in the street directory and only locals may know about them (compared to continuous streets). Trip planner type mobile apps that only consider streets that cars run on might not have detailed pedestrian access way data.

4. Impermanence. It’s not only in posh areas that cul-de-sacs can be closed. To take a random example, when it was built c1979, the end of Wimmera Court (Werribee) was open.

Now it’s closed and part of private property. Since then a shopping centre opened. Had the end remained open it would only be 10 – 12 min walk from it. Now it’s nearer to 15 min, with the perceived time longer due to less directness. I contend that a legible 10 min walk vs a less legible 15 min walk is a huge difference in walking’s attractiveness and thus its share.

Police and residents may push for closure due to apparent crime problems (see 1 above). But especially if there’s a wider pedestrian access issue that affects others from outside the street, then such calls should be resisted due to its effect on the pedestrian network. But it would have been better not to build culs de sac in the first place.

And I don’t think we should just concentrate on access between schools/shops and houses, even though this carries the higher volume – we should also consider anywhere to anywhere trips – eg kids visiting friends houses.

5. I don’t know if it’s my imagination, but in poorer areas the most derelict houses with the worst gardens, the most number of cars on blocks and sheets for curtains are gathered at the ends of courts. If that’s not factually the case it looks worse around the bowl of a court. Check out Studley Court, Laverton on google. Also front fences on houses at the ends of culs-de-sac can be casualties of wayward cars as well. Though not a believer I do think Feng shui has some good design principles, and I that a house on a cul-de-sac bowl draws the shortest straw.

The shape of Melbourne’s streets

A ramble through the street directory

It is not possible to talk about bus network design without referring to street planning, for streets represent the fist of cards from which bus route planners must choose.

City

The Central Business District forms our first grid, with its main thoroughfare and tram spine aligned NNW to SSE, though for simplicity I will describe this as north-south. Its blocks are rectangular, with the ‘little’ streets feeding into the axis streets.

To the north almost all city streets continue into others (albeit angled) as they become West Melbourne, Parkville or Carlton. To the south most streets are blocked by the river, with Swanston and Spencer Streets being exceptions. However walkers enjoy greater permeability with some pedestrian-only bridges to Southbank.

State Parliament and Southern Cross Station bookend the CBD to the east and west respectively. Bourke Street, the central partially malled shopping street, must yield to these buildings at both ends. Whereas Collins Street, its classier southern neighbour, was privileged enough to recently gain an extension at its Docklands end. Its ‘Paris end’ also exits the grid, its leftward veer dividing the politics from the money. Similar easterly access, though with a rightward turn, exists off Lonsdale and Latrobe Streets.

Much of Flinders Street is denied a river vista by Federation Square and the two-block station named after it. The building’s narrowness suits the need to maximise platform space; open skies being an advantage in the steam age. Further west, the railway viaduct squashes the river vista from this quarter of low repute, austere pavements and architectual mistakes. However Flinders, like Collins, is unconstrained by Hoddle, with its trams running east, west and then north.

Docklands is remote, windswept and a mystery to many who don’t work there. Shopping and stadium stunt access to it, via Bourke and Lonsdale, at Spencer. While the former allows pedestrian access, this walk offers insufficient instant gratification during the two block walk; the steep stairs, the railway overpass, Docklands stadium, some ramps and a pause for a busy road deter all but the leisured curious (and tall train spotters). Colour vison is wasted here; everything is a shade of grey, except for one or two still visible brown remnants from the 1970s. However those leaving Docklands are better rewarded as the bridge provides a vista down Bourke Street to St Patrick’s Cathedral.

Docklands’ north-south routes are for driving more than walking, while its finer-grained areas are beyond lunchtime range of unrushed walkers from outside. It could yet become a medieval village with few from outside. Waterfront City attempts a grid but highways or water stymie egress from most directions; it’s not like Elizabeth or Swanston where one can march north or south until one is footsore, as Henry Bolte would wish. Its east-west streets bear the same names as in the CBD proper, but not always the same vistas or tram routes.

The redeveloped Southbank features a somewhat disordered grid. Its thorougfares are either pedestrian or car; different to say Collins or Elizabeth Street where three or four modes mix. Its key pedestrian way is along the river with frequent bridges from the north bank. Vehicle access predominates to the south where roads distribute traffic from the West Gate Freeway. Unlike Docklands, Southbank shows its face to the CBD (via the river) and, its South Wharf portion excepted, is more accessible.

Suburbs

A kilometre or two away from the Melbourne Town Hall, particularly to the north and east, the angled CBD mesh gives way to a coarser but more extensive net whose streets are almost exactly north-south and east-west. The south-south-easterly St Kilda Road makes it gently diagonal in that direction, with junctions with numerous east-west roads (which are exceptionally supplied with trams thanks to the Prahran and Malvern Tramways Trust).

Grid spacing is closest in the old areas of Brunswick, Fitzroy, Richmond, previously home to small factories and the working class. Occasionally these fine-grained areas are interrupted by 1960s housing commission towers on ‘superblocks’.

Spacing widens with distance but the grid becomes no less perfect. It increases from about a half-mile in the 1920s suburbs (10 kilometres distant) to about a mile by 20 kilometres distant. These are all key roads, mostly with building frontages, and also occasionally with service roads further out. Beyond established housing a coarse grid exists as rural roads, no doubt becoming tomorrow’s arteries as suburbanisation encroaches.

Spacings between traffic lights and the roads themselves also widen with increasing distance from the CBD. For buses wide grids mean that service may also be needed on intermediate streets to provide reasonable coverage; something that 1km grids in suburbs like Mount Waverley only just avoids. But whatever their width, grids allow faster speeds and more legible bus routes; one traffic signal and no turns beats two junctions and two turns.

In some directions, particularly to the west, north and north-east, the grid may be interrupted by freeways, rivers, parks or scrap land. Fawkner to Reservoir is short geographically but distant by road, for example. The Yarra also divides and sparsens the suburbs, with only a few favoured roads granted a bridge.

Sometimes, like the bisected Bourke Street in Docklands, both halves may be similarly named, indicating either a former or intended joining. For example the Grieve Parades in Altona, which could make a fine Altona – Toyota – Sunshine industrial bus route if joined. Or the Balmorals, Crowns, Graces and Highs over in Altona Meadows. But hop over to Hoppers and the mile grid reasserts itself with the parallel Tarneit, Derrimut, Morris, Leakes, Sayers, Hogans and Heaths Roads.

Up in Sunshine West, Glengala Avenue goes some way before it hits the freeway. Had it hypothetically continued it may have given Derrimut a bus earlier (possibly an extended Route 454) instead of requiring a wait for a new route (400).

This example demonstrates that discussions about freeways and their form are not only about infrastructure priorities (eg freeways versus railways) but also about the importance of long-distance orbital versus more regionalised road access (that a half to one mile at-grade grid provides). Due to the lack of the latter in parts of the west, the Western Ring Road has been bigger for the west than Eastlink for the east, with its more contiguous development and continuous roads.

The southern portion of Sunshine West does not have an equivalent spine to Glengala Road in the north. The Avenue (which has a bus) forms the makings of a spine but its short streets to the north limits its legible pedestrian catchment. Access is possible into Wright Street but catchment streets are widely spaced compared to the less direct Talintyre Road with more branches. Neither Wright nor Talintyre have buses so some homes exceed 400 metres from one. Whereas streets with the best of both worlds (eg direct road with closely spaced side streets but not necessarily particularly high density) like Sydney Road in Coburg may have facilitated an accessible, fast and well-patronised service.

While four-way intersections are the rule, there are more at some locations. And not just at Five Ways, outside Cranbourne. In the inner-east, all roads lead to Camberwell. Camberwell’s centrality is so great, or the take-up of motoring in this affluent area so early, that it sapped surrounding suburbs of significant shopping strips. In contrast more homes are walkable from a supermarket along the less affluent Dandenong and Frankston lines.

Multi-way junctions attract the map viewer as much as they are cursed by drivers. Eyes scanning a map are naturally drawn to St Kilda Junction, Reservoir and the notorious but soon to be removed Haymarket roundabout in Parkville. Two or three roads may meet obliquely, slicing the suburban grid. Examples includer Camberwell (again), Kew, Reservoir and Footscray. However mass motorisation caused prewar accessibility to become congestion and multi-way junctions have not been favoured since.

Inside grids

There are differences as to what’s inside the grids. Inner suburbs have grids within grids, with older working-class suburbs like Brunswick, Collingwood and Richmond markedly denser than spacious Mont Albert or Malvern East.

Other planners filled their grids with curves, not unlike an arched window. That off Bay Street in Brighton boasts an inner, middle and outer circle. Albion’s Selwyn Street more successfully encloses its park but does not form the suburb’s centre. Western Glenroy’s arch is irregular, while Sunshine West’s is a neat rounded square.

Circles are rare enough to confer novelty, like knots in a timber beam, but aren’t confined to the poshest suburbs. Albert Park’s grand St Vincent Gardens is the full circle (or oval), unlike Brighton semi. Altona North must feel impoverished with just its tiny circle (called ‘The Circle’) with attempted polygons surrounding. Nevertheless it forms the hub of local commerce. St Albans’ circle daintily sidesteps its main road junction. It forms a six slice cake, with the railway splitting it cleanly in half. Commerce occupies one slice with reserves in the centre.

Central reserves are the common pattern; circle centres are too oddly shaped to subdivide and they provide a pleasant outlook for homes lucky enough to front them. Homes also provides passive surveillance for park users.

Centres however vary greatly in size. Unlike the scraps of land in St Albans’, the park in the aptly named Park Orchard’s circle is large and unbroken. It forms a large steering wheel, though three of the four spokes are footpaths rather than roads.

Not that distant is Circle Ridge in Chirnside Park. I’m guessing this surrounds a peak given the street name. If this is the case then its aim may be to angle houses to look outwards at the view instead of the usual inward park. Pakenham’s version has a literary bent and encloses a lake.

More common than circles in the postwar suburbs are curvilinear streets and then culs-de-sac. These were considered to offer greater interest to the resident and visitor while respecting land contours and calming traffic for childrens’ benefit. Unfortunately though the layout induces vehicle usage due to low pedestrian legibility and permeability. The ‘exclusive’ golf estates like Sanctuary Lakes, Chirnside Park and the unserveable Sandhurst are the biggest offenders, but the pattern is widespread.

There are sometimes access ways at the end of culs-de-sac but these lack street frontages and may be perceived as unsafe. Since local police and residents groups often support closure of access ways and alleys (to reduce assaults, theft and graffiti), such access is less permanent as that via grid streets with street frontages.

The busier arterials in these areas may lack building frontages (more the case in newer cities like Canberra than Melbourne), or, where there are still buildings, they are set back from the street with service lanes and large front parking areas. Intersections are widely spaced, and in the worst cases are controlled by roundabouts. Distances are too far for people to talk or even recognise one another in the next building or across the street, from one shop door to another.

And even if they could (eg through a GPS-based mobile phone app linked to Facebook), the limited pedestrian access only grudgingly provided at widely spaced intersections means that such roads cannot sustain the form of street life written about by Jane Jacobs. Neither this nor the curvilinear distributor street nor the cul-de-sac suit efficient ‘last mile’ bus routes; one reason for the success of trams, along with their service levels, is the walkable grid that feeds each stop.

New urbanist planning has influenced new residential street layouts more than locating new shopping centres near stations or making industrial employment areas walkable. Modern estates now have straighter or at least connected streets compared to those of the 1980s. Altona Meadows was an early example, with a dense grid not unlike older suburbs. This layout allows a single bus route (411/412) to serve a suprisingly large catchment. And while weekend services are limited, its 20 minute weekday frequency is high for a 1970s-1980s suburb.

This evolution is clearest in established outer suburbs that have grown continously for a century or more. Central Cranbourne, Pakenham or Werribee both have old-style grids. Around 1 to 2 km out several kilometres of cul-de-sacs start. Even further out is often a modified grid, less regular than the old but with a legible central street that could take a tolerably direct bus.

However there is still difficulty in connecting adjacent estates. Bridges are expensive and we're not so gung-ho about draining swamps these days. Hence Shearwater Drive in Pakenham peters out into a park and creek and there appears no provision to connect it to Meeking Drive (and thus link it to the proposed Cardinia Road Railway Station). Buses instead would need to weave on and off the main highway, slowing travel and likely partly duplicating other routes.

Street design for walkability and transit has improved over the last thirty years but not over the last hundred. And decades of impermeable layouts and controlled access roads has left us with a legacy of culs-de-sac to open, super-blocks to bust and roundabouts to remove to improve accessibility.

Road transport's most civilised invention?

Safe, reliable and direct pedestrian access to transport stops is a more fundamental need than niceties like seats, shelters and real-time displays. The latter all improve the passenger experience but are of little use if access to the stop is difficult.

There are numerous ways to improve pedestrian access across roads. Their cost varies from negligible (for a zebra crossing) to many million (for an overpass). In between are treatments involving median strips or traffic lights. Their effectiveness (as measured in terms of average and maximum wait times) likewise varies. There are also trade-offs, mainly based on whether we prefer roads to maximise throughput of car traffic or facilitate access via a variety of modes.

The table below compares how well various access measures assist the passenger cross a road to reach a stop. Assessment criteria included waiting time, whether guaranteed access is provided (a roundabout or an unsignalised road that offers an indefinite stream of unbroken cars does not, for example) and cost.

While each method has its strengths and weaknesses, the humble zebra crossing stands out as the highest and best means of pedestrian access. They are also very cheap to build. I would go so far to nominate the zebra crossing as road transport’s most civisised invention.

How did I reach the three criteria?

Firstly access time. A critical part of making public transport more attractive is speeding random-arrival end-to-end travel times. Along with bus or tram priority, out of vehicle components of travel time are the easiest and cheapest to improve through attention to co-ordinated timetabling, service frequency, easier interchange and pedestrian access.

Then there’s the measure of whether guaranteed access is provided. This affects all walking trips but is particularly critical for access to public transport due to its reliance on timetables and the large time consequences (up to an hour) if a service is missed. Unlike signalised intersections, underpasses and zebra crossings, busy roundabouts or unsignalised intersections with continually flowing traffic offer no such guarantees so are major barriers to pedestrian movement.

Lastly there is cost, for which I make no apology in including. Especially in a dispersed city with thousands of intersections, a large number of low-cost improvements would probably benefit more people than a few very expensive projects. For example, 100 new zebra crossings may be possible for the cost of a single elaborate pedestrian bridge, while for motorists there are similar trade-offs between new road/rail grade seperations (cheaper) versus new bypasses or freeways (more expensive). Bus/tram priority at intersections and roundabout removals are similar low cost/high gain projects.

Zebra crossings have another virtue in that they only slow road traffic when used. Due to this and their low construction cost it is best to err on the side of too many zebra crossings than too few. And what some may see as too many assists walkability as it makes a neighbourhood more permeable on foot.

If a new crossing is so heavily used that motor traffic is significantly delayed, it should not be condemned. Rather it is evidence that it filled a previous unmet access need and has encouraged people to walk rather than drive for short trips. Most people are pragmatic rather than ideological in their transport choices, so an improvement in walking access should result in more walking.

Zebra crossings undoubtedly have their detractors.

Busy crossings may be seen as impediments to motorists, much like pedestrians see roundabouts, freeways and long ramps to overpasses. For they, along with traffic calming and even some road rules, challenge the doctrine of the ‘open road’, a presumptuous and romantic relic from early last century’s gentleman motorists and their clubs.

Mid last century’s ‘scientific’ traffic engineers also had little time for the zebra crossing due to their ‘inefficient’ obstruction of car traffic. Grade seperating various road users became the fashion. Trams were to be dismantled or buried, cars kept at level and pedestrians confined to overpasses in various proposals for central Melbourne (including from the RACV). 1950s futurist images often showed a fourth level; a swarm of commuters in helicopters.

While private motoring took off, mass grade seperations in our city centres did not. Costs were prohibitive. Road – road and road – rail seperations in established areas often cause overshadowing and urban blight, with Sunshine, Oakleigh and Huntingdale being prominent Melbourne examples.

The closing decades of the 1900s was marked by a reaction against the traffic engineer’s dominance of city planning. Examples include the 1970s freeway revolts and 1990s ‘new urbanism’ movements. Urban amenity was considered sufficiently important for the King Street bridge in Melbourne’s CBD to be removed and levelled, while pedestrian access to Southbank was improved as part if its redevelopment.

Environmental, security and physical benefits are often-cited advantages of more people walking more often. However in daily life these ‘warm and fuzzy’ factors are unlikely to influence behaviour beyond the minority who think strongly about these things.

Much greater success is likely if walking becomes attractive to the ‘transport pragmatists’ who will use whichever mode best suits the trip at hand. It is here that road transport’s most civilised invention may have benefits disproportionate to its small cost.

Happy New Year!

Best wishes to all readers and loved ones for a healthy and fruitful 2011, and may all your transit connections be as serendipitous as this pedestrian crossing!

Postcard from Tasmania: No spirit for the Spirit

In keeping with the season’s holiday mood, following are two snapshots of transport outside Melbourne. The first discusses ferry passenger connectivity facilities at Devonport, as encountered last week.

There couldn’t be any more contrast between transport facilities at each of the ‘Spirit of Tasmania’ termini. The Spirit is a large car and passenger ferry with daily night sailings with day sailings added during peak season.

Melbourne’s Station Pier is at the end of a major tram route, running every few minutes mostly on its own right of way. Pedestrian access is short, direct and legible, with excellent walking and cycling paths. A convenience store and restaurants are within sight. While less prominent, Bay Street’s shops and services are also comfortably walkable.

Devonport is Tasmania’s third city, smaller than only Hobart and Launceston. It is Tasmania’s northern gateway, welcoming backpackers and tourists to surrounding mountains, trails and farms.

The city is divided by the River Mersey. The CBD, accommodation, entertainment, tourist bureau and most housing is on the west bank. On the east is light industry, some housing and the Spirit of Tasmania ferry terminal. The ferry terminal is a stone’s throw across the water from the city centre, with land access via a bridge approximately 2km to the south.

View Larger Map

The Spirit of Tasmania and the people it brings is important to Devonport’s life and economy. Childrens’ murals on the showground’s wall often depict the ferry. The council office names Devonport as the ‘City with Spirit’. And the ship’s daily horn, what is to Devonport as church bells are to a medieval city, removes any doubt.

If the ferry is such a big thing in this town, let’s see how well the transport needs of its passengers are looked after, especially those who came without cars.

The photo shows the first impression arriving passengers get after leaving the ferry and collecting luggage.

Following are seven observations made following the day sailing on December 22, ie close to peak season.

1. The Spirit of Tasmania is scheduled to arrive at the 'out of town' East Devonport terminus at 6pm. However the Torquay ferry, which could provide a quick trip into town, only runs from 8am to 6pm, unsuitable for Spirit passengers arriving after six. The local tourist bureau confirmed services are not extended an hour in peak season to cater for the day ferry’s arrival.

2. The Merseylink town bus service operates to East Devonport via the aforementioned bridge. Route 60's nearest stop is about a five minute walk east of the ferry terminus (see map) so is potentially useful. That is until one checks the timetable, which had the last weekday bus leaving at 5:46pm. On Saturdays the last bus is at 4:00pm, while no service runs on Sundays. Again this service finishes too early to be useful for ferry passengers. In addition few town bus stops inspected had timetables, maps or route information so these service only really cater for residents, who through trial and error, already know where the bus goes.

3. Despite the absence of conventional public transport (ferry or bus) there appeared to be no shuttle bus to take alighting passengers to central Devonport, which would be a key destination for those staying or touring locally.

4. No taxis were seen in the area, despite the likely brisk business, due in part to the above limited transport options. There also appeared to be no visible taxi rank or signage indicating same.

5. Some ferry passengers had bicycles – presumably for touring. There were no defined cycle routes or wayfinding signage to guide their 4km ride into town, although the Council's Cycling Network Strategy identifies their need.

6. The tourist bureau correctly advised that the ferry terminal is about an hour’s walk from Devonport CBD. Again there was no map or wayfinding signage at the ferry terminal to assist those walking into town. Hence the sighting of of lost backpackers in an industrial area’s intersection not far from the ferry terminal.

7. The locals know their town has lousy transport, and sometimes offer tourists seen walking a lift. Although haphazard, this appears to be the most effective transport option that Devonport can offer day sailing passengers.

Conclusion

Melbourne has more than 100 times Devonport’s population. The big-city facilities at Station Pier are neither expected nor appropriate at East Devonport.

Nevertheless Devonport’s failure to provide low-cost facilities such as street maps, pedestrian and cycle wayfinding signage and taxi ranks surely reflects poorly on its support for a ferry service that Australian taxpayers subsidise (cars, not passengers, mind you). Extending either the Torquay ferry or Route 60's hours so it meets all Spirit sailings would also help connectivity.

Until then Devonport is worth visiting only to learn what not to do when it comes to connecting various transport modes or looking after disembarking passengers. As discussed last year southern Tasmania offers riper pickings for the transport tourist.

Pedestrian strategy and who gets what

Almost unremarked in the mainstream media was the launch of the State Government’s Pedestrian Access Strategy earlier this month. It follows the Cycling strategy released previously.

Rather than explore the strategy, this post will look at how pedestrian resources have been allocated and hence reveal some of the choices and priorities of State Government policy makers to date.

Differing fortunes

Walking and public transport have had different fortunes in the last 30 years.

Metropolitan public transport patronage reached a low point in 1980. Until the early 2000s there were rises and falls, but an overall increase (generally in line with population but insufficient to increase modal share). 2004 – 2009 saw accelerated growth, sufficient to increase transit’s modal share. Preoccupied with rail franchising, refranchising and regional projects, the State Government tapped into this trend quite late but is now providing significant ‘catch-up’ funding for improved bus services and rail infastructure. In the last year train patronage growth has slowed and additional peak services on some lines have relieved crowding though peak punctuality remains too low for reliable connectivity with buses.

Page 18 of the Pedestrian Strategy tells a different story for walking. Its modal share for work commuting more than halved between 1976 and 2001, with only a slight recovery to 2006. This fall is similar in magnitude to the collapse in suburban rail travel during the 1960 – 1980 period.

Just like public transport battled suburbanisation, rising car ownership and limited bus service levels, walking’s enemies have been rising road traffic, poor suburb design, the decline of shopping strips, increased parental protectiveness and the trend to amalgamamated and/or private schooling. And although almost everyone walks, there has been no high-profile organised pedestrian lobby group, such as enjoyed by car drivers, cyclists and public transport users.

Pedestrian funding

If public transport infrastructure spending (and even basic maintenance) can claim to have been the poor cousin to road investment over most of this period, pedestrian access funding is positively destitute.

Page 13 and 14 detail pedestrian access funding over the last ten years. The total spent or earmarked to be spent comes to over $640 million. The distribution of this is as follows:

* $350 million over 10 years to make public transport accessible to people with disabilities. An additional $150 million will be spent on infrastructure to further this.

* 2008 Victorian Transport Plan commitment of $115 million for bicycle lanes and shared bicycle and walking paths (it is not mentioned how much of this has been spent, nor what portion would benefit pedestrians)

* $16 million for the Local Area Access Program (small scale access projects involving local government)

* $5.5 million on TravelSmart (basically marketing walking/cycling/public transport over driving)

* $3.5 million for Vicroads to improve crossings of arterial roads

All public transport trips involve some walking. The ease of reaching a transit stop and vehicle is a critical part of the travel experience, so improving pedestrian access improves the overall service to a wide range of passengers, not just those with impaired mobility. There is a long-standing aim to make our system fully accessible and each passing year sees more low floor buses and tram stops. Investment here accounts for $500 million of our $640 million, or about three-quarters of all claimed pedestrian access spending.

However walking is a transport mode in its own right and the majority of walking trips do not involve a connection to public transport. Its modal share (when measured by number of trips, not trip-kilometres) commonly exceeds that of public transport in many areas, especially for non-work trips.

The amount remaining less public transport accessibility improvements is about $140 million. The lion’s share, or $115 million, went to improvements involving cycling. It is not clear how much of this can be counted as an improvement for pedestrians.

Another 3% of the $640 million, or about $20 million, goes to small-scale access improvements for which pedestrians appear to be the main beneficiary. This includes a $16 million local access program for small-scale local government projects and $3.5 million for improving pedestrian access across major roads, which can divide communities and block safe and direct pedestrian movement.

The potential importance of local projects such as these cannot be underestimated. Most of the Melbourne in 2040 already exists today, and there are thousands of projects such as median strips, traffic calming, signal modifications, roundabout removal and cul-de-sac openings that would boost the walkability of every established suburb.

Although these projects are individually cheap, their sheer number means that $20 million (over several years) doesn’t go very far. Even a twenty fold increase (which would bring the amount involved to that nearer that invested in public transport accessibility) would still represent under 1 percent of Victorian Transport Plan funding and be more consistent with the stated aim of increasing walking’s share.

Finally there is the $5.5 million for TravelSmart funding. This is more properly attributed to several modes including public transport, cycling and even car pooling rather than purely walking. TravelSmart has delivered worthwhile projects such as local access maps (now at city Bike Share racks). However comparing TravelSmart’s allocation with pedestrian access improvements on main roads ($5.5 vs $3.5 million) appears to indicate that telling people that walking is better has a higher priority than making it so, at least on our busier roads.

Priorities

What priorities and biases do these funding patterns indicate?

Disability rights advocates such as Margaret Stevens strenuously argue that the pace of accessability improvements for public transport has been too slow. Melbourne has a particuar problem with its trams as most are older high floor units and many stops are still mid-road ‘safety zones’ that provide for poor access. Funding for accessibility improvements is a minority of total Victorian Transport Plan funding but represents a majority of state government pedestrian funding. Against this it could be considered to be a top priority.

In the middle are various paths, for both cyclists and pedestrians.

At the bottom are local pedestrian access projects, especially where they involve access across main roads.

These funding priorities indicate a welcome tendency to build (or improve) paths but a reluctance to improve access across main roads. A bad path (or none at all) is unattractive to walkers and should be fixed. But at least for the able-bodied it does not seriously reduce end-to-end access speeds (which is the only sound way to measure pedsheds) provided there is some space by the road.

In contrast poor access across main roads results in them forming barriers for much of the day, often barring people of all abilities from reaching bus stops (including some served by low-floor SmartBuses) by the most direct means. Long traffic light cycles similarly compress the ten-minute pedsheds of shopping centres, railway stations and bus stops, reducing the practicality of walking compared to driving.

A pedestrian access audit would find that addressing such pedestrian access deficits on main roads (which in some case may only require an altered traffic light cycle, zebra crossing or new median strip) represent a high priority that should receive a large proportion of project funding.

However the historical reality of funding, according to Pedestrian Strategy figures, is different; just $3.5 million out of $640 million funds went to Vicroads for this purpose.

The Pedestrian Access Strategy is what bureaucrats call a ‘high level’ document with many excellent ideas – if only they were implemented. Its ‘Making it happen’ section describes a governance and consultation process. However it does not give a funding amount nor an indicative works program (eg annual targets for new footpaths, median strips, pedestrian lights, zebra crossings, cul-de-sac joinings and roundabout removals).

Until such a substantive construction program commences, it would appear that Melbourne has a way to go until pedestrians are regarded as legitimate traffic rather than impediments to same, and that road managers can implement goals other than the maximisation of car traffic speed and throughput.

Pedestrian Access Strategy launched

Read it here

Small usability improvements for public transport

A great deal of transport project funding is already committed through major transport plans whose projects are typically long-term and infrastructure-based. It will be a while until the major ones come to fruition. A lot of the rest is recurrent expenditure.

Our growing population still has unmet travel needs and public transport is being asked to take on a larger role.

Hence there is a real need for transport improvements that are not expensive but can increase the usability, capability and thus patronage of transit services. Such improvements can either be one-off small infrastructure projects or a few extra services inserted at times when existing timetables are lacking.

Below is a list of examples, grouped by benefit. Their benefits are typically both local (by improving access for a particular area) and network-wide (as traits such as coverage, legibility and frequency are improved).

ACCESS AND CATCHMENT ENLARGEMENT

Frankston is a case where the station entrances south of the station is remote from most surrounding houses and further than it needs to be from a shopping centre. Passengers coming from these areas often need to backtrack to board the train, increasing their walk by 300 - 400 metres.

This extra distance is a large percentage of a station's 800 metre pedshed. Adding a northern platform entrance at 'X' would speed access for thousands of users and increase the station's 800 metre pedestrian catchment to include more residential areas off Beach Street.

The map below shows how the northern part of Patterson Lakes is physically near but just outside a station's pedestrian catchment for want of direct roads or walking paths. A narrow pedestrian/cycle bridge across the channel plus upgraded bicycle storage at Bonbeach Station would cheaply extend the reach of the rail network and provide a faster journey time than changing to a bus.

CONNECTIVITY

A common problem faced by transit is how to serve major destinations (such as universities and shopping centres) that are just beyond a railway station's pedestrian catchment. Southland Shopping Centre has a very frequent bus service from Cheltenham Station. However buses may depart from any of three widely spaced stops, so getting the next bus to Southland has always been a case of pot luck. Modifying routes to serve the same stops could allow the full benefits of the high frequency service provided to be realised.

The timetable for Route 517 below is an instance where buses cannot reliably connect with trains due to their unharmonised service interval. The effect is widely varying end-to-end trip times (making the bus a last-resort transport option) and the need for passengers to carefully pick trip times to avoid excessive waiting.

Sometimes slightly less frequency can mean better service. In the example below, reducing 517's Saturday headway from 38 to 40 minutes and Sundays from 55 to 60 minutes would at least provide constant interval connections with every second or third train respectively.

SERVICE SPAN AND FREQUENCY

There are certain times where span and frequency do not represent desired or actual travel patterns.

An instance of the former is the period immediately after the pm peak. Spreading the peak increases both efficiency and patronage. A way to encourage this is to more attractive shoulder-peak train services, such as higher frequency and express services. Critical times could be 9-10 am inbound and 6 - 8pm in the outbound. As stations are already staffed and the trains already exist, the main resources needed would be drivers and maintenance staff.

One area of unserved patronage demand is Sunday morning, where many people attend suburban markets or (sometimes) early sporting events in the city. NightRider buses have finished and the first outbound arrivals in some outer suburbs are not much earlier than 9am. Melbourne is a particularly late starter compared to Sydney, whose trains start much earlier on Sunday morning.

Unlike a frequency increase, bringing the Sunday start of service forward by 60 - 90 minutes represents an increased span. This shortens the period available for track work on Saturday night. In addition the increased span increases staffing costs at premium stations, which are staffed from first to last train.

If the cost of funding the extra 1-2 hours station staffing per week is an issue, it may be possible to find some offsetting savings by closing staff service at non-safeworking stations earlier, for instance just after the last 'up' train rather than the last 'down' on (say) a Sunday night. This would reduce customer service as regards ticket purchase facilities, toilets and perceived safety through staffing on Sunday evening. However based on a greater good argument, it may be that that the new patronage attracted by the new early Sunday trains would exceed those dissuaded from riding the last couple of Sunday evening down trains.

LEGIBILITY

One of my hobbyhorses, familiar to regular readers, the route below would be better off split into two route numbers (even if services continue to through-route via Chadstone).

Legibility is improved if a standard arrangement across all routes applies for public holidays. There have been rapid recent improvements and a majority of bus routes now have similar patterns to trains. However those as yet unstandardised are some of the busiest services in Melbourne, such as the case below:

EFFICIENCY

Addressing access and usability issues such as the above are relatively cheap, although some would involve recurrent expenditure. Costs in all cases would likely be in the low millions as opposed to hundreds of millions to billions for major projects. Nevertheless inefficiencies should still be identified and removed, especially if there exist improvements that provide larger benefits for the same expenditure.

The following are examples of routes that were useful when they were commenced but appear to no longer serve a useful function as new or upgraded alternative routes now exist.

Sources: Timetables - Metlink Victoria Pty Ltd, Maps - Melway Publishing 2007 & Google Maps.

Government database content and getting to work

The Victorian State Government has made available data on a range of topics. It is hoped that this will encourage entries in the App My State competition.

There are two data sets that directly concern public transport. Transnet is a database containing stop data and timetable information for most public train, tram and bus services in Victoria. It is maintained by Metlink. In addition another file contains stop data only. It is important to note that both files are frequently updated and there's a chance that what you download today may not necessarily be the latest version. Nevertheless it will still be useful for competition purposes.

The format of the above information may be unfamilier to those whose computer experience is limited to basic Word and Excel use. You will need to be into databases to get most benefit from this data.

Other information provided also has relevance for transport. An example is Suburbs in time for which data is presented in Excel format.

Suburbs in Time data is a bit old, based on the 2006 census, but is still interesting as there is a census question related to travel to work. For example, in 2006 20% (574/2661) of employed Glenhuntly residents took the train, versus barely 3% for Frankston (450/14898). And for Frankston just 5 more people took the train in 2006 than 1996, compared to a 221-person increase for Glenhuntly.

While there are differences such as Frankston Station's large catchment and the possibility that some Glenhuntly residents would board the more frequent service available at either Elsternwick or Carnegie, it does indicate that even mature suburbs can generate high patronage growth. Brunswick, another suburb attractive to city workers, has shown even more impressive growth, but for tram rather than train. As an outer growth area, Hoppers Crossing would have expected high patronage growth, and it did get some, but at least up to 2006 its growth has been modest relative to the high population growth. This is likely due to the distance of most local employment areas from railway stations, limited bus services (soon to be increased) and high car and parking availability.

The proportion who walked is another interesting stat. Walkable suburbs have a high proportion of walkers whereas less walkable suburbs do not. For example in 2006 202 Werribee residents walked to work (compared to just 74 who got the bus). Still a small proportion of the 16251 employed. Inner Werribee (both north and south) is a long-established and walkable area.

Hoppers Crossing is less walkable but has a similar workforce and proportion of walkers to Werribee. Possibly this could be attributed to Werribee Plaza (actually in Hoppers Crossing), which is a major employer and is walkable from some residential areas.

In 2006 Rowville had the same number employed as either Werribee or Hoppers but only 148 walked, about 25% less than either Werribee or Hoppers. It's a pedestrian-hostile neighbourhood and the largest employer would be Stud Park Shopping Centre. This is not walkable from most of Rowville and is smaller than Werribee Plaza. Rowville also has higher incomes and more multi-car households than Werribee.

Reservoir is another large suburb with similar numbers of employed persons as Werribee, Hoppers Crossing and Rowville (about 17000). Though there are some pedestrian-hostile intersections, much of the suburb is a walkable grid. The number of walkers to work here was 246, ie about 25% higher than Werribee and about 70% higher than Rowville.

While detailed knowledge of workplace locations would be desirable for further research, the above numbers indicate that suburb walkability does have some bearing on the numbers of people who walk to work. However given that work trips are often longer distance than other trips such as shopping and recreation, and this would work against walking, the extent to which non-work trips are made by walking is also important for a true idea of walking's share, and one not answered by the census data.

Scramble Crossings: Friend or foe for passenger interchange?

London got a new pedestrian crossing earlier this week. Instead of waiting twice when a diagonal crossing is desired, the new 'scramble crossing' clears all roads of vehicles during the walk cycle. This allows pedestrians to cross diagonally on a single 'green man' and in turn increases road space available exclusively for both cars and pedestrians.

London was by no means the first; busy crossings in Japan, Canada, New Zealand and Australia (to name a few places) had them before. Having all cars stopped while the entire intersection fills with pedestrians is a striking sight compared to existing crossings where cars are always moving somewhere and pedestrians are confined to narrow lines. Instead of having to wait for two red men, diagonal crossers only need to wait for one. And they're safer. So the idea has allure and may have applicability in Melbourne CBD.

The BBC report missed mentioning any possible downsides of scramble or 'barn dance' crossings. Their cycles can be longer so you may wait more. The safety gains may be negated by increasing impulsive crossing.

Although the proportion of people who cross straight versus those who need to cross diagonal depends on trip generators around the intersection, my own observations of Perth show that most pedestrians are not making a diagonal crossing. While this comment is subject to what changes are made to cycle times, changing from a conventional crossing to a scramble crossing disadvantages those crossing straight, ie the majority.

A trend in Melbourne in the last ten years has been reduced direct access to city stations. A remodelling of Melbourne Central reduced direct access from Swanston Street while the reconstruction of Spencer Street/Southern Cross Station closed the subway under Spencer Street.

Increased waiting and access time increases end-to-end trip times, as shown on the table below:

The difference between the two lines is that the first trip takes longer as passenges need to cross a road to get to a tram stop. In the second example they do not; the tram stop is directly outside the station. A zebra crossing is near enough to a seamless crossing but a signalised pedestrian crossing, especially one with long cycles, is not.

For the purpose of examining end-to-end transit times, it may be useful to regard a road crossing just like a short but frequent bus or tram service. After all familiar transit planning concepts like as span, frequency, reliability, forced transfers, DDA access and overall service levels all equally apply to pedestrian crossings.

For example, a CBD traffic light crossing may have the following service characteristics:

Service Span: 24 hours
Frequency: 120 seconds*
Max Wait time to walking/transit time ratio: 120 seconds/20 seconds (ie equivalent service level to an hourly bus route for a 10 min trip)
Reliability: 100% (you will always get a green man within the advertised frequency)
Forced transfers: Present for diagonal crossings on non-scramble crossings

(*) This represents the maximum frequency, not the average frequency. 120 seconds is clearly 'turn up and go' so there are no timetables for pedestrian crossings. Given that we are dealing with tranfers to scheduled services, we must always use the maximum wait figure to guarantee a 'connection', even if the average will be less.

What about other types of crossings?

A zebra crossing is the 'highest and best' form of pedestrian access. This is because its frequency is effectively infinite since you have right of way when you step on it (after previous cars have gone). While there is a forced transfer (you can't go diagonally through an intersection) in practice this doesn't matter as the frequency is effectively infinite. The same is true for a quiet unsignalised street as the delay caused by one or two passing bicycles or cars is neligible.

Conversely a busy road near a roundabout will have a constant stream of traffic. There is no minimum 'service frequency' for pedestrians - this is set by traffic speed, traffic volume, and the risks they are willing to take. Some times there may be a lucky break in the traffic, other times one may walk to the nearest traffic light, or simply give up. Hence both service span and reliability are both undefined, with service level being lowest during busy traffic times (up to a point - if traffic slows to a crawl this may aid pedestrian access).

In this extreme example the overall level of service provided is like an unreliable bus or train that does not reliably feed passengers to the real bus that picks up on the other side of the road. In other cases, although direct walking time to a bus stop might be 5 minutes, passengers may need to double or triple this to increase the likelihood (but never an assurance) of finding a gap in the traffic. This of course increases end-to-end travel times and reduces both overall speed and reliability.

Let's extend our service level parallel to scramble crossings. Being a traffic light type crossing their service characteristics are like those mentioned above. But there is a parallel with bus network design that I wish to tease out further.

Consider a signalised crossroads with four corners. From any one corner you may wish to go to any one of the three others.

With a conventional intersection if you want to cross diagonally you need to wait, cross one road, wait again and cross another. The extra waiting is effectively a forced interchange if we continue the transit system analogy. You didn't want to go to the intermediate spot, but the signals and traffic require you to.

In contrast, if it was a scramble crossing, you can go straight to the corner you want. There is no forced transfer via an unwanted corner and the trip is more direct.

But this comes at the expense of frequency or cycle length. Just like with buses. For a given route kilometres budget you can either have multiple infrequent routes that run to each of your preferred destinations, or you have one frequent service from which you will need to change (to other frequent services) for some trips. The infrequent option is inflexible and doesn't suit many people's needs, although those who it does satisfy get a direct trip. On the other hand the frequent model provides an attractive service for most people to most places, but at the cost of transferring.

The analogy is only partial since while scramble crossings may result in reduced frequency through longer cycles, the level is still at 'turn up and go' levels. This is unlike a bus system where the choice might be between 60 minutes for the direct service network or 15 minutes for a transfer hub based network. Still, the 60 minute approach is roughly akin to a scramble stop on a long cycle (but where you can go anywhere on the 'green man'), while the frequent service approach would be like zebra crossings or short-cycle lights where it's one at a time but the wait for each is short.

For best public transport interchange, it is essential that the act of transferring from train to bus not be regarded as a trip in itself (with its own 'forced transfer' disincentive). This requires direct 'infinite frequency' pedestrian access with a platform to stop transfer time of (say) thirty seconds rather than two minutes or more. Such 100% reliability access could be provided by a stop directly outside the station, a zebra crossing or buses that enter a train platform or Perth-style overhead ramp connected by escalator.

How does this answer the original question about the appropriateness of scramble crossings at interchange points? The answer is that, as with good transit networks, frequency is key. Scramble crossings are good if their cycle times are not significantly lengthened. But if offered the choice between shorter cycle times and scramble crossings, the importance of frequency makes the former look more attractive.

Introducing 'The Connected Transit Network'

Presented is a 2-minute video that illustrates the main differences between a transit system that forms genuine network and one that is just a set of random routes that discourage interchange.

This video is different to others presented here. It has been heavily edited and there are more pictures than talk. Picture quality (though still not great) has also been improved and there is some use of visual effects.

800 minutes extra per year

A suburban bus stop whose relocation will save regular passengers up to 800 minutes per year commenced full service this morning. The stop, pictured below, cuts the number of road crossings required from the highway and shopping strip from four to one. Access time has been reduced from about four minutes to two minutes. Transfers from station platforms are also easier and are achieveable in just a few seconds from Platform 2.

Before

The videos below show access to the 888/889 bus stop at Chelsea in 2008:

Part 1

Part 2

(Two parts were needed for this video as access took such a long time).

After

The video below shows how it is as of October 10, 2009 when the stop was relocated nearer the station:

(Quicker access meant it could be filmed on one short video only.)

Saving access time...

The travel time saving quoted in the title is worth a further look. 800 minutes is over 13 hours per year. In other words well over one working day.

It applies for a walk-on passenger using the bus twice daily for 200 days of the year and holds for people going to or from destinations on Nepean Highway.

It's a bit different when transferring between train and bus. This is because a faster access time does not save end to end time if it means is waiting 3 minutes instead of 5 minutes for a connection. However there would be times when the faster access time means a bus or train that would previously have been missed can be boarded.

The potential time lost due to a missed connection is a function of service frequency. For the 888/889 intervals between departures vary between 10 and 40 minutes. The train runs more frequently, but intervals can still be 30 minutes during early mornings, evenings and Sundays.

Hence any time the improved access allows an otherwise missed connection to be made can save the passenger up to 40 minutes waiting. That is the 'best/worst' scenario and savings would usually be less. If considered along with these cases where faster access does not speed end to end time the average is likely to tend towards an 800 minute yearly average, especially given more or less random waiting times.

...and better reliability

Does the relocated bus stop also help overall service reliability, as measured by variability in end-to-end travel times? Yes it does.

Train-only passengers complain if their train is 10 minutes late and thus their arrival is delayed by that much. While this does affect many, they get off lightly compared to those who need to change to a bus. A late train may result in a missed bus and a wait of 30 or even 60 minutes until the next one.

A missed bus connection can increase end-to-end travel time by up to 50%. Anyone would agree that such variability, even if it happens once or twice a week, would be a disincentive to use public transport, or at least local buses. Afternoon peak trips to outer suburbs are most affected due to the snowballing of train delays and infrequent buses home.

A 2 minute access saving helps by making some previously dicey transfers more reliable. Instead of a 5 minute late train being enough to cause a lost connection, the train can now be up to 7 minutes late and the connection can still be made. For people making this particular connection the gain from relocating the stop is not so much reduced travel time but increased reliability.

Sensible stop location is one piece of the puzzle that makes or breaks an integrated transport network. The relocation described here will strengthen the network by reducing travel times and improving overall reliability.

RACV calls for bus stop access improvements

The RACV, has been doing some useful work on Outer Melbourne Footpaths and their connectivity with bus stops.

Their investigation got significant coverage in the local papers, such as a story in this week's Mordialloc-Chelsea Independent.

The RACV's decision to lobby on footpath access to bus stops is appealing for several reasons:

The first is that they have found a gap in bus service provision. The buses may run, stops may be put in, signage may be erected, but the paths to the stops is some other department's problem so do not always get built.

The second is that the costs of remedies are low. Hence (unlike say level crossing seperations) there should be no government budgetary barriers to extend footpaths to bus stops.

The third requires one to imagine oneself as a motoring lobby. You may suppport a bus improvement but as it will be paid for by others it's a cost-free way of being seen to be green. Your members would not begrudge this since almost as many as the general population take transit, walk or cycle as well as drive. Plus the choice of footpaths running parallel to roads has no possibility of delaying cars, as could be the case with alternative projects like pedestrian crossings, roundabout removals or roadspace conversions to bus lanes. All things considered it is very good politics.

The only possible criticism of Outer Melbourne Footpaths is its limited scope. Footpaths to bus stops are good and needed. But full access to stops also needs fast, direct and safe pedestrian access across all roads at all times of day. These require crossings, traffic light cycles and urban design that do not always put the motorist first, and accordingly may not always be favoured by their lobby groups.

Despite the study's limitations the RACV has successfully brought an important public transport issue to general attention. For this it deserves passengers' thanks.

Walking a fine line: A look at Victoria Walks

You may have noticed a new link added to the sidebar - Victoria Walks.

While I've previously posted on pedestrian issues, the emphasis has been on walking to access public transport and transfer between services.

However walking also needs to be regarded as a transport mode in its own right, and not just as a means of recreation or physical exercise. Walking even beats public transport for some trips. The distance where walking is faster ranges from about 1 to 5 kilometres, with higher figures in pedestrian-hostile locations, or where where transit has limited frequency, connectivity, directness and coverage.

How significant is walking as transport? The census question about transport asks about the journey to work. This is the very journey that people are least likely to walk and walking's modal share is low. Counting all trips would probably give a higher share for walking but it is still often dismissed as a 'minor access mode'.

What are the main threats to walking's attractiveness as transport? Key is bad urban and traffic system design, with examples being missing footpaths, absence of crossing facilities, buildings that don't address the street or have easy footpath access, long traffic light cycles or excessive use of roundabouts, blank walls facing footpaths and poor passive surveillance. The design of our suburbs, covering matters such as a permeable street grid, location of transit stops, and co-siting of activity centres around transport nodes are also important. The costs of designing new suburbs along these lines is negligible, and even retrofitting existing suburbs need not be expensive given the benefits. There are also social attitudes, for instance a perception of being unsafe when walking. Just as with public transport safety more people walking tends to create a virtuous spiral of 'safety in numbers'.

What is walking's political representation like? Drivers have the RACV. Cyclists have Bicycle Victoria. Public transport passengers have the PTUA. Even though there are more pedestrians than either drivers and public transport passengers, Victorian pedestrians have no organised lobby to advance their interests (whereas NSW has the Pedestrian Council).

As walking costs the user nothing, there is almost no 'walking industry' or 'vested interests'. For example, it requires no ailing car industry for governments to protect with tariffs, subsidies or loan guarantees. It involves no new trains, trams or buses. Plus there are no multimillion dollar franchises, operator contracts or powerful unions at stake. The upgrade of suburban streets to become walkable grids would generate jobs for road construction companies, but these firms could just as easily be building new roads, so these companies don't have a particular vested interest in pedestrian improvement projects either.

Does the lack of political representation for a particular transport mode automatically mean that nothing in that field gets done? Not necessarily. Though Perth's 'Friends of the Railways' were successful in getting the Fremantle line restored, and this fostered the biggest suburban rail revival of any Australian capital, it appears to have been academics and sympathetic governments who maintained the momemtum to complete a series of major projects including electrification, Joondalup, Thornlie and Mandurah. WA appears not to have a passenger lobby group as prominent as the PTUA in Melbourne (and those that are there appear to have been offshoots from a reasonaly strong environment movement, eg STCWA) who would have been expected to advocate such extensions.

The situation as regards walking in Melbourne is a little different. As mentioned above there is no prominent pedestrian lobby. University transport academics occupy high profiles in public debate but public transport and urban planning tend to be their favourite topics. Other matters such as walking and freight transport appears to be less advocated, or at least are less reported in the papers.

Is suburban walkability a significant part of state transport plans and budgets? When considering this allowance needs to be given for the involvement of both local and state governments. The various state transport plans have typically involved road and public transport infrastructure projects, with a swing towards the latter in the Victorian Transport Plan. Pedestrian access was not a major part of this plan, or of the debate that preceded it (about the Eddington report, tunnels and surging rail patronage). While there exists a Local Area Access Program that supports pedestrian access projects, its budget appears to reflect the extent to which walking is regarded as a serious transport mode.

The lack of a lobby and academics to lead debate, the relative absence of media on pedestrian access topics (outside the occasional article in the local paper) and the absence of a significant program to make existing suburbs walkable all indicate unmet needs. These only intensify when the social and fitness benefits of walking are added.

Stepping into this gap is the Victoria Walks website. This turns out to be a registered charity sponsored by VicHealth. VicHealth is a health promotion foundation established by parliament as part of the Tobacco Control Act (1987). Although funded by cigarette taxes, its health promotion goes well beyond the Quit Campaign to includes areas such as physical activity, which is where Walking School Buses and Victoria Walks come in.

To reflect its sponsor's aims, the motivation behind Victoria Walks appears to be the health benefits of walking. This is much like how cycling and cycle tracks is seen as a recreation as much as a transport mode. And some might see buses in some areas mainly as social welfare, since their ridership is predominantly 'captive passengers'. Which leaves cars, trucks and trains as the 'serious' transport modes deserving of 'real dollars' through various transport plans and administered by a dedicated department.

What is the content of Victoria Walks? There is one thing it isn't; it's not a simple exhortation for everyone to walk at least 30 minutes a day.

Instead it emphasises a 'bigger picture' or 'community engagement' model. If psychology can be said to emphasise the individual's mind and sociology society's values, Victoria Walks is clearly favours the social, the community and the 'active' (politically as much as physically).

Hence site readers are encouraged to do 'walking audits' of their neighbourhood and form 'walking action groups' to 'engage government'. There are many case studies from parts of Melbourne and around the world to open minds as to what can be done. And the achievements of Walking Action Groups, such as questions in parliament and replies from councils, are highlighted for further encouragement.

Although its excellent website contains much useful background information, Victoria Walks is not a lobby group in itself. After all its funding source effectively makes it an arm of government, and one area trying to lobby another part would look odd. Nevertheless it does engage in what I would term 'advocacy support'. They won't directly lobby or give specific advice but the website acts as an enabler, encourager and mouthpiece for others to do so.

Victoria Walks is an example of initiative on an aspect of transport coming from outside the department ostensibly responsible for it. The progress of it, and particularly any activity it spawns, will be well worth watching.

Stimulating public transport

This week the Prime Minister announced billions of dollars in cash handouts and funding for various projects to 'stimulate the economy'. The object appears to be, in Keynes style, to get people spending and thus retain jobs. There are some things like home insulation subsidies, road blackspot fixes and community facilities that might benefit. However the spirit of the personal handouts appears to be that it matters less where the money goes than if it ends up being spent. Besides most of those working aren't too badly off at the moment; lower interest rates and lower petrol prices are bringing relief to the key outer suburban 'mortgage belt' electorates.

But what if you had a stimulus package to spend on public transport? What sort of things would be in it, and what would be missed? Given the emphasis is on short-term spending on quick projects, very large rail and road projects would not be included. And though highly desirable, and necessary to maximise use of public transport infrastructure, off-peak and shoulder-peak service frequency increases involves some recurring funding so might not be sustainable if funded by a one-off 'stimulus measure'. Hence while important, they won't qualify for money from this particular bucket.

So having excluded them, here's my list of top five transport projects that would deliver lasting benefits from stimulus money.

1. Small scale pedestrian access improvements. Each metropolitan municipality might have an average of 50-100 such projects, which might include zebra crossings, underpasses, traffic islands, roadworks, roundabout conversion to traffic lights, cycle modification, etc. These would be focused around shopping centres, bus stops and railway stations, and also larger roads where there are long intervals between safe crossing points.

2. 1000 kilometres of new cycleway to form a new city-wide network, including grade-seperation with roads on major routes. This rate of construction is several times that which currently occurs.

3. Modification of suburban streets in transit-hostile neighbourhoods. This might include widenings (to permit bus movements), modified roundabouts (to permit buses), opening of culs-de-sac (to permit more direct bus, cycle and pedestrian movement) and new pedestrian and bicycle bridges over rivers and creeks between suburbs. The latter would expand the pedsheds of bus stops and railway stations and reduce backtracking. On larger roads, minor works to assist bus and tram movement could also be done, perhaps complementing the worthwhile 'blackspot' program.

4. An expansion of passenger information, with bus information at railway stations and general information in 'main streets' off the system. Travelsmart-style maps at interchanges and in public places would also identify key walking and cycling routes.

5. A program of works to improve train reliability and make the currently fragile network more robust. This might include projects such as accelerated concrete sleepering, better security for often vandalised trains, lightning protection of vulnurable signal boxes, track duplications, communication improvements and more.

A veritable shopping list for sure, but doing them would kill two birds with one stone; 'stimulate the economy' and deliver improvements of enduring value. At least the higher taxes we'll have to pay in the future to support increased public debt will have had something to show for it in this period of building.