Our chauffeured children are a problem we can't ignore

[redsonic]

Interesting article from the ABC looking at how children influence car use and how they are not thought about much in urban transport planning

ABC News

Includes a photo of school drop-off time in inner city Copenhagen:

[trailgumby]

Good to see these challenges to orthodoxy being raised.

[CKinnard]

The ABC are painfully light on investigative facts in this day and age.

Greater metro Sydney equals the entire nation of Denmark in population.

Copenhagen metropolitan area is about 2800km^2 with popn of 2.4million, resulting in a popn density of 86 people/km^2.
Greater Sydney has a popn density of 1237 people/km^2, so 14x more densely populated.

The Copenhagen capital region population today is 10% lower than it was 30 years ago.
The Greater Sydney population is 74% higher than 30 years ago.

10-15km in any direction from Copenhagen CBD, is intensive agriculture.

Jobs are not as intensively concentrated in the Copenhagen CBD as Sydney, which is born out by the lower density of high rise.

Public transport is more traditionally used in Copenhagen by all socioeconomic demographics. Why? because it is considered relatively safe, clean, reliable, convenient.

Public transport is generally not vandalized, and there is less violence or intimidation or inconsiderateness towards older travelers by young.

The ABC must have some brains that can make all the above fit whatever their narrative is.

[human909]

It didn't take long for the Australia is different argument to pop up!

But it seems you have missed the very FIRST sentence. Yes Australian cities are different. That is the point we haven't given urban planning the least bit of thought. And never thought beyond designing our cities around cars.

[CKinnard]

It didn't take long for the Australia is different argument to pop up!

But it seems you have missed the very FIRST sentence. Yes Australian cities are different. That is the point we haven't given urban planning the least bit of thought. And never thought beyond designing our cities around cars.

Do you think the differences I mention don't impact whatever capital city green NIMBY nirvana ABC have in mind, at least for their staff and friends? (the rest can eat cake hey).
Tokyo has 6,158 and NYC 10,194 people / sq.km....check their % cycling trips.
The ABC has been a consistently confused agitprop for growing the Australia population faster than any other developed nation (migration argument), but stifling it via natural birth rate (climate change argument).
Sydney and Melbourne ites love their property values trending 3-4x the rate of CPI.

Urban transport planning is a dependency on many factors, that the city gentry are mightily confused about, and not at all interested in confronting with eyes wired open.

[fat and old]

It didn't take long for the Australia is different argument to pop up!

You seem to think that’s bad. In the immortal words of JSM....why is it so?

[g-boaf]

It didn't take long for the Australia is different argument to pop up!

You seem to think that’s bad. In the immortal words of JSM....why is it so?

I used to say more connected cycleways would help, only to have cyclists themselves disagree (one of them replying in this very topic).

Sydney is pretty flat, so there isn't any great reason preventing it aside from lack of will and bureaucracy.

[fat and old]

Unless I'm mistaken, the design of Copenhagen, central Sydney and the Hoddle Grid in Melbourne all share a common theme. They were all designed before the advent of the motorcar, so I take issue with some statements to the contrary straight away. Personally, I'd have thought they were designed around

1. Transport of people and goods.
2. Land use as dictated by those in power.


Never underestimate #2. Whether those people/entities in power are governments, corporations, kings or merchants, their first interests are/were themselves. Nothing else. It's fortuitous that old Europe lends it'self to pedestrian and cycing transport, but to claim that the design was deliberate is disingenuous. The design of those cities was carried out much the same as cities always have been.

How cities are maintained and modified for the now and the future is what counts.

[Calvin27]

We have the highest rates of population 'growth' and spend all of our political capital and planning efforts trying to make stuff work that was designed for half the capacity. Unfortunately even though cyclist infrastructure helps alleviate this the high density nature (in particular ) Sydney has made it too hard for revolving door political leaders to put their wight behind.

[find_bruce]

Sydney is pretty flat, so there isn't any great reason preventing it aside from lack of will and bureaucracy.

Sydney has lots of short sharp hills, particularly in the east, inner west, north shore & northern beaches. Sure they are no impediment to someone as fit as you are, or even someone who is fat slow & old like me - you get used to them fairly quickly, but they are a barrier to people starting out, particularly those that really need the exercise.

Speaking of barriers & the CBD, even the SMH is getting in on how the vast majority of people in the CBD are expected to wait for the privileged few - Two minutes too long before crossing? Push to shorten pedestrian wait

[g-boaf]

Sydney is pretty flat, so there isn't any great reason preventing it aside from lack of will and bureaucracy.

Sydney has lots of short sharp hills, particularly in the east, inner west, north shore & northern beaches. Sure they are no impediment to someone as fit as you are, or even someone who is fat slow & old like me - you get used to them fairly quickly, but they are a barrier to people starting out, particularly those that really need the exercise.

Speaking of barriers & the CBD, even the SMH is getting in on how the vast majority of people in the CBD are expected to wait for the privileged few - Two minutes too long before crossing? Push to shorten pedestrian wait

The areas where we are badly lacking cycling infrastructure are some of the areas that are quite flat - you will have to agree. There is no real Penrith through to Parramatta through to CBD direct cycleways that I know of. The mooted cycling 'highways' never went any further than lines on maps in proposals from cycling advocacy groups.

If you want examples of hilly, then look at the western side of Innsbruck across the Inn River and particularly going up the Weiherburggasse, people of all ages and types ride around there on all sorts of bikes. If they can manage that, then Sydney shouldn't be a problem. If a short sharp hill is a reason to not ride or not build infrastructure, then we'll have no cycling and no cycling infrastructure at all.

[CKinnard]

Another angle to this debate is the average length of commute/ride by Copenhagen people.
The majority do not ride carbon bikes, nor commute longer than 10km.

BTW, I'd love to get back to the days when kids could walk/cycle to school rather than being shuttled by Toorak tractors with poor visibility by multi-tasking time pressed mothers. But the first step to that in Sydney is to stop with ever growing population density and concentration of jobs in central Sydney. And that's not going to happen in my lifetime.

[march83]

Penrith is an island. Everyone I know who commutes out of there, myself included, use some pretty indirect and slow routes through some of the dodgier parts of Sydney. They are slow, lots of stops, lots of turns, lots of transitions in and out of traffic.

There is definitely a need for something - allocating one of the lanes of the GWH to bikes would go a long long way to providing commuters with a way to escape Penrith safely. Not including any cycling provisions in the M4 upgrades currently underway was a massive missed opportunity. Even just a continuous cyclepath parallel to the GWH would provide some options.

[queequeg]

Copenhagen was not always a cycling Nirvana. There is no reason that places like Sydney can't become like Copenhagen in terms of converting car trip into Cycling trips, but it isn't going to magically happen unless the general population starts demanding it from elected officials.
Go and read Chapter 6 in the book "Copenhagenize: The Definitive Guide to Global Bicycle Urbanism".

[g-boaf]

Penrith is an island. Everyone I know who commutes out of there, myself included, use some pretty indirect and slow routes through some of the dodgier parts of Sydney. They are slow, lots of stops, lots of turns, lots of transitions in and out of traffic.

There is definitely a need for something - allocating one of the lanes of the GWH to bikes would go a long long way to providing commuters with a way to escape Penrith safely. Not including any cycling provisions in the M4 upgrades currently underway was a massive missed opportunity. Even just a continuous cyclepath parallel to the GWH would provide some options.

That's what makes it ridiculous. Longer cycleways and longer distance commuting are practical options if you provide people with a wider and faster cycleways that don't have many stop-start situations. Those stop-starts take a lot of time when you add them up.

My own commute is only relatively short - just 11km, but I have about 5 minutes or so added by waiting at traffic lights, two of them are very slow.

We can forget about being exactly like Copenhagen, that's not going to happen. But we can do our own thing in terms of getting the best cycling infrastructure set up for the situation we have. But we aren't even doing that. And while the people out there (even riders) keep voting for anti-cycling governments, nothing will change.

And just on the GWH, there are cycling lanes in portions of it, but just here and there, not everywhere. That's the frustrating thing about it.

[redsonic]

Perhaps I shouldn't have posted the photo of Copenhagen... For those of you who skimmed/ didn't read the ABC article, it doesn't mention Denmark/Holland/insert your own cycling nirvana at all. In fact, aside from the photo caption, it makes no mention of what is done/attempted elsewhere. It critiques Australian local governments for not including children's transport needs in their planning.

The ABC has been a consistently confused agitprop for growing the Australia population faster than any other developed nation (migration argument), but stifling it via natural birth rate (climate change argument).

If the ABC is so biased towards population growth via immigration not birth rate, why has it published an article about planning for children's needs?

[AdelaidePeter]

There is definitely a need for something - allocating one of the lanes of the GWH to bikes would go a long long way to providing commuters with a way to escape Penrith safely. Not including any cycling provisions in the M4 upgrades currently underway was a massive missed opportunity. Even just a continuous cyclepath parallel to the GWH would provide some options.

That's what makes it ridiculous. Longer cycleways and longer distance commuting are practical options if you provide people with a wider and faster cycleways that don't have many stop-start situations. Those stop-starts take a lot of time when you add them up.

My own commute is only relatively short - just 11km, but I have about 5 minutes or so added by waiting at traffic lights, two of them are very slow.

So I assume those are traffic lights you wouldn't have to stop at if you were in a car?

[march83]

@AdelaidePeter: for me, some are and some aren't. As a general rule, the pedestrian lights are green for a shorter period, or they don't cycle at all unless you push the button. I use the road in sections where I don't get a fair go at the crosswalk traffic lights because it adds significant time to stop at a red man and wait for a complete cycle to pass. I also have optimised my route to trade distance for traffic lights because on average the slightly longer route is quicker if I take out the random variables of traffic light delays

[g-boaf]

There is definitely a need for something - allocating one of the lanes of the GWH to bikes would go a long long way to providing commuters with a way to escape Penrith safely. Not including any cycling provisions in the M4 upgrades currently underway was a massive missed opportunity. Even just a continuous cyclepath parallel to the GWH would provide some options.

That's what makes it ridiculous. Longer cycleways and longer distance commuting are practical options if you provide people with a wider and faster cycleways that don't have many stop-start situations. Those stop-starts take a lot of time when you add them up.

My own commute is only relatively short - just 11km, but I have about 5 minutes or so added by waiting at traffic lights, two of them are very slow.

So I assume those are traffic lights you wouldn't have to stop at if you were in a car?

Those are actually car traffic lights. They sometimes have strange slow sequences. That section I'm on the road as the cycleway doesn't go where I need it to go.

[find_bruce]

So I assume those are traffic lights you wouldn't have to stop at if you were in a car?

There is a section where I ride on the road in preference to using a parallel separated bike path because the 500m can take up to 8 minutes on the bike path as each of the 4 bicycle lights only turns green for 6 seconds every 2 minutes. Despite cyclists outnumbering motor vehicles on the road you get a green for ~1 minute 20 & thus get a green wave where cyclists get a red wave

[CKinnard]

Perhaps I shouldn't have posted the photo of Copenhagen... For those of you who skimmed/ didn't read the ABC article, it doesn't mention Denmark/Holland/insert your own cycling nirvana at all. In fact, aside from the photo caption, it makes no mention of what is done/attempted elsewhere. It critiques Australian local governments for not including children's transport needs in their planning.

The ABC has been a consistently confused agitprop for growing the Australia population faster than any other developed nation (migration argument), but stifling it via natural birth rate (climate change argument).

If the ABC is so biased towards population growth via immigration not birth rate, why has it published an article about planning for children's needs?

Fair crack of the sav, Red!

The Copenhagen photo was included in the story by the ABC authors, for very good reason.
They could have included a photo of country schoolkids cycling to school passing a grazing cow, but that would imply their solution is we pack our bags and exit the densely populated urbanscape.

They could have addressed the article's "sustainable" mobility concerns with a photo of electric vehicles and nuclear power stations, and town plans with population caps. Although maybe not, cos we've been told for yonks catastrophic climate change is unavoidable no matter what we do to avoid it (even all turn vegan and stop using air con).

Re net OS migration vs natural increase, 2/3's of our annual 1.8% popn growth is a result of the former, and this growth is the cause of town planning failures, transport pressures, etc on capital cities, where most migrants make home.
Australia's natural increase at 1.81 children per female, is inadequate to sustain current popn.

An article about sustainable anything, but especially capital city mobility, should have cut to the chase and addressed what drives the problem i.e. population growth, as noted (on the ABC) by Ian Lowe and Simone Alexander
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/p ... t/10084852
But funny how population growth was overlooked in the article you reference, and interviews such as with Lowe and Alexander are the exception rather than the ABC rule, the diversity rule.

At least climate change scientists have reassured us we are not going to die as quickly as they have been saying for the last 40 years.
They just realized cows produce 25% less greenhouse gases than thought.
All those years running a 25% error rate!

[Calvin27]

An article about sustainable anything, but especially capital city mobility, should have cut to the chase and addressed what drives the problem i.e. population growth, as noted (on the ABC) by Ian Lowe and Simone Alexander

Yep, I find the environmentalists ignorance of this particular issue amazing and alarming at the same time.

Population is the ky driver that makes cycling infrastructure so bloody hard to do and expensive. Basically land becomes very valuable and then people fight tooth and nail to use what little land for their purpose. Some want cars, others want parking spots, some want to build high rise others want schools, parks and green spaces. Ease up population, allow planning folks to catch a breath and actually come up with policy and a plan and then build the sucker when people don't live in an apartment 2 bike lanes wide.

[Thoglette]

Ease up population, allow planning folks to catch a breath and actually come up with policy and a plan and then build the sucker when people don't live in an apartment 2 bike lanes wide.

Ease up population and we'll keep building freeways. Don't ease up population and we'll keep building freeways.

We've been doing "populate or perish" in one form or another as long as I can remember and we've been making a pigs breakfast of urban and transport planning for just as long.

The current mess is not a new problem: it's inherently linked to the dog(ma) whistle of "small government" and "cut red tape" and "free markets" which has been running for the last three decades.

[queequeg]

So I assume those are traffic lights you wouldn't have to stop at if you were in a car?

There is a section where I ride on the road in preference to using a parallel separated bike path because the 500m can take up to 8 minutes on the bike path as each of the 4 bicycle lights only turns green for 6 seconds every 2 minutes. Despite cyclists outnumbering motor vehicles on the road you get a green for ~1 minute 20 & thus get a green wave where cyclists get a red wave

Likewise, there was one cyclist crossing on my commute where you had to wait 8 minutes for the lights to change, because it was determind that stopping 6 lanes of cars on a major arterial road was too much of an inconvenience for motorists, just to let a pesky cyclist get to the other side and continue their trip. That 8 minutes represented 10% of the total trip time from home to the office, or in terms of distance covered I would be 4km down the road before the lights changed.

[CKinnard]

Ease up population, allow planning folks to catch a breath and actually come up with policy and a plan and then build the sucker when people don't live in an apartment 2 bike lanes wide.

Ease up population and we'll keep building freeways. Don't ease up population and we'll keep building freeways.

We've been doing "populate or perish" in one form or another as long as I can remember and we've been making a pigs breakfast of urban and transport planning for just as long.

The current mess is not a new problem: it's inherently linked to the dog(ma) whistle of "small government" and "cut red tape" and "free markets" which has been running for the last three decades.

LOL...the current mess is due to
- more tax revenue going towards transfer payments (welfare and the majority of health care spending) for which there is no return on investment
- more on government debt servicing (tripling in real terms since GFC)
- less tax revenue going towards gross fixed capital formation (infrastructure and other assets).

As a nation, long term planning and provision of infrastructure is hobbled by govts and mainstream media pushing an entitlement mentality - hey voters, do you want a public transport system that runs at a perpetual loss for the next 50 years....or do you want public health care, unemployment benefits, pensions, rent subsidies, and an NDIS to keep pace with CPI?
Australian electorates are not good at delayed gratification and going without to fund infrastructure.

Further, govt expenditure has outgrown revenue.
i.e.
1999 expenditure 240B = 24.0% GDP revenue 250B
2017 expenditure 451B = 26.6% GDP revenue 417B
so govt are paying for current lifestyle benefits by borrowing from future revenues!

And don't even begin to look at State Govt disposal of public assets to finance transfer payments.


Basically, Australia is borrowing from future revenue AND selling assets to fund its lifestyle.
And that's why infrastructure has lagged for decades, and elites of all colors mask the mess with population and credit growth.