Pedestrians, cyclists to get extra '20 Bourke St Malls' of space in CBD

On-street parking and road space equivalent in size to 20 Bourke Street Malls in Melbourne’s inner-city will be repurposed to make space for pedestrians, cyclists and greenery.

Lord mayor Sally Capp in Little Collins Street on Thursday.

A radical reshaping of the city’s streets that gives pedestrians and cyclists more priority over cars will take place between now and 2030, according to Melbourne City Council’s draft transport strategy, released on Thursday.

Read the story from The Age by Timna Jacks - “Pedestrians, cyclists to get extra '20 Bourke St Malls' of space in CBD.”

Safety, lack of proper lanes, turn many off cycling, says city counci

Fears over safety, potential conflict with cars and pedestrians, and poorly planned bike lanes discourage many from getting on a bicycle, Melbourne City Council research has found.

Lord mayor Sally Capp and councillor Nicolas Frances
Gilley, the chair of the MCC's transport portfolio.

The city council will on Thursday release a discussion paper on cycling that will help inform its next transport strategy, due out by the end of this year.

Read the story Clay Lucas from The Age - “Safety, lack of proper lanes, turn many off cycling, says city council.”

The water is coming for Copenhagen; good design could be its best defence

Each day, hundreds of thousands of commuters snake their way across bridges that connect Copenhagen’s many islands. Cyclists, motorists and pedestrians speed over busy canals and race through the thin cobbled streets of the old city, while canal tour boats filled with tourists slowly orbit the centre. On a warm day, the canals are lined with sunbathers jumping from BIG architects’ famous harbour baths, with their distinctive barbershop stripes. Paper Island, in the Christianshavn district, is home to the city’s new pop-up cultural precinct. It is regularly filled with diners, who spill out of the warehouse housing Copenhagen Street Food to watch the sunsets on its banks.

Copenhagen is a city that thrives from its coexistence
with water. By 2100, this relationship will need to be re-negotiated.

Since its beginnings as a Viking fishing village, Copenhagen’s relationship with the Baltic Sea has played a vital role in shaping the city’s culture. Today, canals cordon off its many islands, serving the veins that pump life into its distinct geographical and cultural pockets, such as Christianshavn, even as they divide them. The canals contribute both to Copenhagen’s particular aesthetic and its leading place in global liveability rankings. But the harbour city, whose name has become shorthand for the 2009 UN Climate Change Conference, sees water not only as its biggest asset, but one of its biggest risks.

Read the Foreground story - “The water is coming for Copenhagen; good design could be its best defence.”

Food delivery device invades our footpaths

The "suitcase" meets a pedestrian
 - it's programmed to give way.

Pedestrians often complain that there is no room on the sidewalks (and in New York City, people are taking to the streets because of it), and it’s because the cars stole all the space and everyone else is fighting over scraps. And while we worry about how pedestrians will deal with autonomous vehicles on the roads, now they will also have to worry about autonomous delivery vehicles on the sidewalks.

Vehicles like the new Starship, designed in Estonia, tested in London and soon coming to Washington DC. CEO Allan Martinson describes it in the Washington Post:

“It’s basically a mobile phone on wheels,” Martinson said. Its low speed and weight — 4 miles per hour and 40-pounds max — also short-circuit safety concerns, he added. “It’s basically a rolling suitcase. If you go home and try to kill yourself with a suitcase, you’d have to be very inventive.”

Read the Treehugger story - “Will autonomous delivery robots soon be pushing pedestrians off the sidewalks?”

Transition to driverless cars a worry to Queensland professor

Prof Andry Rakotonirainy is worried.

The Queensland University of Technology (QUT) expert in intelligent transport systems and human factors believes that a road network full of self-driving cars will be far safer than today’s human-directed traffic, but what has him concerned is how to make the transition.

“We know that in over 90% of cases, crashes are due to human error,” he says. “Theoretically, if we have a driverless car and the driver is out of the loop, it means less crashes.

“In practice, it’s not that easy, when we say the driver is out of the loop it means the entire fleet will be deterministic and there won’t be any errors.

“That is not going to happen as we face a transition period of a mixture of automated cars, human driven cars and other road users like pedestrians and cyclists who are not automated.

“That period worries me.”

Read The Guardian story - “The end of cars is coming, so what will happen to the petrol heads?”

(The trouble is not the car itself, driverless, electric of otherwise, rather it is the idea from which we are unable to escape; emotionally, psychologically and physically. The idea that the imagined good life evolves from having unrestrained access to privately owned transport, in this instance a privately-owned motor car, is the root of the trouble, a far greater worry than that alluded to by Prof Rakotonirainy.

The “transition” he refers to is small change compared to the inevitable change facing us within decades, and that is a switch from privately owned cars and motorcycles to some form of public transport – Robert McLean).