Rob Stokes — A unique Opportunity to Reset Transport for NSW's New Normal

By Stephen Coulter & Krystyna Weston, Co-Founders of Zipidi and Asia Pacific Micromobility Alliance

The "New Normal" world needs a new normal approach to Transport. The stars are aligning for Rob Stokes to deliver:

• Minister Stokes has formal post-graduate planning qualifications, even a PhD, and understands urban design and community - better than any planning or transport minister in NSW's history. He is passionate about community and understands the environmental aspects.
• The two previous transport ministers are leaving parliament, and there is clean air for a change.
• The impacts of COVID on Transport are beginning to be understood and resulting in different transport requirements to what was planned only two years ago.
• The Minister's portfolio of Planning, Public Spaces, Transport and Roads has the breadth to make coordinated changes for the betterment of all.

In his inaugural speech to the NSW Legislative Assembly on 31 May 2007, some excerpts of Minister Stoke's speech included:

And words like “ecofriendly” and “eco” are, in my experience, used by some developers as code for replacing ecology with concrete. The words and ideas we really need to create a comfortable and enduring relationship with our environment are “consciousness” and “justice”…

…Indeed, consciousness is a precondition to justice. We cannot create a just environment without first recognising our culpability in creating the present ecological crisis…

…Far from generating better public transport, urban consolidation has simply put more cars on the same roads.

Unfortunately, Minister Stokes words did not change previous Transport's actions, and roads have increased with many more cars than in 2007.

Now with Transport and Roads in his portfolio, Minister Stokes can make some historic changes for the good of NSW, its communities and people. He can deliver justice with consciousness.

The New Normal Context

Significant behaviour changes occurred through COVID, many of which are positive and will continue:

• More people are working from home more regularly, resulting in more short and local journeys.
• Greater focus on local communities — more time spent locally resulted in closer local communities, space being allocated from cars to people.
• Increased car use — people felt safe in their own car "cocoon" — an unhealthy outcome of COVID — traffic is now above 100% of pre-COVID levels in many cities.
• Increase in active Transport — particularly bikes, eBikes and eScooters — as well as walking. Some governments have encouraged and supported this through new and improved permanent and pop-up bike lanes, reallocation of space to pedestrians and local traders.
• Reduced use of public Transport — as people feared the risk of COVID transmission and required public Transport less when working from home.
• The trend to 15-minute cities has accelerated, where residents can walk or cycle for most of their day-to-day activities within 15 minutes.

Transport of the future is about people and community, not vehicles — it’s more appropriately described as mobility and should seek to help people move in COVID-safe sustainable ways, increasingly local and shorter distance.

A Minister of Mobility is a better description than a Minister for Transport. Some cities and countries are already adopting this nomenclature.

In Australia, pre-COVID, there were more than 10 billion short car journeys per year — most under 5km.

Nearly all of these short journeys can be moved to active sustainable modes with supporting regulations, vehicles, incentives and infrastructure.

Here's our 5 point program for progressive "New Normal" transport in NSW.

1. Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and Safe Streets
2. eMobility Private & Shared
3. Induce Demand for Good
4. Focus on Local and Local Connections
5. Reinstate Freshwater Ferries

Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and Safe Streets

NSW has started cautiously down this path — some LGAs are adopting or trialling 30kmh speed limits. Meanwhile, cities like Paris and countries like Spain make 30kph the basis for city and countrywide speed limits.

30kph should be the default speed limit for residential streets, CBDs (where cars are allowed), local shopping areas and high activity areas for children, pedestrians and bikes.

A 30kph speed limit dramatically reduces the risk of accident and death and reduces the need for additional short-term infrastructure. Bikes and other forms of electric Personal Mobility Devices can comfortably and safely co-exist in low-speed areas without additional bike lanes.

Together with a 30kph speed limit, NSW should:

• Change school speed zones to 30kph from the current 40kph; 30kph is the safe speed; why keep children at risk!
• Adopt and encourage Open Streets and Play Streets which close streets regularly for the community — sometimes permanently.
• Adopt further "Low Traffic Neighbourhood" practices — reduce traffic in busy areas, increase traffic calming measures and reallocate road space and parking to community, pedestrians and micromobility. London and many cities worldwide are doing this, accelerated by COVID and the new normal world.

Low-traffic neighbourhoods

eMobility — Private & Shared

NSW is Australia's laggard regarding electric personal mobility device support. There has been massive growth in this form of Transport globally through COVID — accelerating a trend already occurring in cities and countries with progressive, future-looking transport strategies.

Minister Stokes, please recognise the state of the industry in 2021 in terms of safety, quality devices and operating practices. Electric scooters, bikes, skateboards and other emerging devices are safe, fun and practical for the local and short journeys of the new normal NSW.

We arrange insurance for these devices and have the data to help you make safe decisions to support the citizens of NSW.

Tens of thousands of NSW citizens have already bought and ridden these devices illegally. Many not realising their government's outdated regulations result in insurance being invalid as they are undertaking an "illegal" activity. For the protection of citizens, this must be addressed urgently.

The industry, experts in TfNSW, the NSW Productivity Commission and many others support this approach — as Minister for Mobility(?) you can make this change quickly. The regulatory changes required are:

• Adopt the approved National Transport Commission report and "model laws" for electric Personal Mobility Devices.
• Update their recommendations to reflect the characteristics and size of today's safest and most innovative devices.
• Harmonise ebike and ePMD vehicle standards with the EU and North America to enable a broader range of safer and more innovative devices to be imported and used in NSW. Current regulations make it uneconomic for many manufacturers to create an Australian model of the best and safest vehicles.

We have written in more detail on how this can be progressed here:

Transport for NSW Fiddles while Paris, New York, London and 600+ cities scoot!

Induce Demand for Good!

Induced demand is the well documented negative outcome of most major road projects.

Driven by twentieth-century thinking, governments build more, bigger and "faster" roads under pressure from industry and motorists due to traffic congestion. A temporary congestion easing occurs — which then induces more driver-only cars as they are enticed back to the roads — often away from public Transport. Within a couple of years, the congestion is back, and nothing has been achieved, except more cars sold and billions spent on even more congested roads — see the excerpt from Minister Stoke's inaugural speech at the start of this article.

This excerpt from ABC Australia's program Utopia does a much better explanation of induced demand than most transport experts.

Induced Demand Works — Let's Use it for Sustainable Transport.

What about the radical idea of using induced demand for good! Here are some demand inducing recommendations to get some of Australia's 10 billion short car journeys replaced by walking, cycling, scooters and other forms of micromobility.

1. Make riders feel safer — the main barrier to more active travel, 30kph local speed limits, safe streets and low traffic networks all assist with little infrastructure cost.
2. Adopt progressive electric vehicle standards to encourage greater use of ebikes and ePMDs for short journeys, first last/mile journeys and deliveries. These include allowing eScooters and ePMDs, allowing throttle bikes limited to 25kmh, allowing eBikes with more powerful motors — still speed limited to 25kmh — to allow greater use by heavier riders, in hilly areas and for delivery of cargo and children.
3. Allocate priority bike and micromobility parking spaces at the existing train, bus and ferry hubs — reallocate car spaces — one car space can accommodate 15 to 20 bikes and scooters.
4. Provide transfer benefits to bike and scooter riders who ride to public Transport — whether privately owned or rented bikes or scooters. TfNSW is already trialling this with Lime bikes.
5. Integrate bikes and scooters into monthly transit passes — this is being trialled in Brisbane.
6. Provide rebates to purchasers of bikes, ebikes and ePMDs — many countries, states and cities have programs to support this outcome with great results — it is billions of dollars cheaper than building more congested roads.
7. Stop building major roads and car parks — review if they are necessary or will induce more car demand. The Northern Beaches link should not be built with the knowledge gained since 2019. Wales is already suspending new road building in this article we parodied earlier this year.

Stephen Coulter on LinkedIn: NSW government suspends all future road-building plans | 19 comments

Focus on Local and Local Connections

The New Normal is Hyper-Local — more people are living and working in the same geographic area.

More local infrastructure creates more significant local economic activity. Local infrastructure, like protected mobility lanes, create local jobs. Major road projects support international businesses. Focus on local projects for immediate economic returns.

Activities to support this include:

1. Focus on local shared paths and protected mobility lanes that connect end-to-end to local transit hubs, shopping centres, sporting facilities and other local destination points. Too many bike paths are like "join the dot" puzzles — bits of cycleway which don't connect and require riders to expose themselves as vulnerable road users.
2. Reallocate car parking spaces to bike and ePMD parking — particularly at local shopping and strip shopping centres. "Parklets" incent more active travel and keep bikes/scooters off footpaths.
3. Link local networks so longer journeys can be completed safely. Often a short link can create a much longer safe route. Transport for NSW has a linked network and vision for cars but not for active Transport. We wrote an article on this in 2019, which included this example.

Infrastructure Vision for Sydney's Disconnected Cycleways

Reinstate Freshwater Ferries

The decision to decommission the large Freshwater Class Manly Ferry is a very poor one. It was made by a transport minister who acknowledged he did not take tourism into his decision framework — as it was not in his portfolio.

It is not too late to change this decision and retain all 4 Freshwater Class ferries. As we approach the first New Normal Sydney Summer, Manly will be revitalised, and large capacity ferries are needed — which can cope with all conditions. The Queenscliff is undertaking its last scheduled journey today, and the Narrabeen will follow soon. Both should be maintained, retained and redeployed to the Manly route.

Freshwater ferries still have 20–40 years of economic life and have much greater COVID-safe capacity than the small inner harbour style Emerald class ferry.

The Freshwater ferries cost around $5 million to service and survey every five years. It is reported it will cost $7 million or more to scuttle each of them! Both the Queenscliff and Narrabeen should be maintained and retained. The next five years can be used to design and develop large capacity, seaworthy electric ferries as the ultimate replacement when the time is right.

The Freshwater ferries are the best performing and most loved form of NSW public transport and a tourism icon for Sydney and Australia.

We have written in more detail on this issue and why they should be retained here:

Andrew Constance & Manly Ferry — A Thousand Miles from Care

Minister Stokes, now is the time for consciousness and justice in the New Normal mobility world of Sydney and NSW. We hold high hopes your expertise, passion and consciousness for sustainable communities will deliver a forward-looking mobility plan for NSW.