ITS Monday: Edition 1, 2024

Update on Australian transport trends

First up for 2024, a wrap-up of 2023 from Chris Loader’s Charting Transport blog. Here Chris has compiled stats from BITRE’s annual yearbook. The article contains 67 charts and analyses of: vehicle kilometres travelled, passenger kilometres travelled, public transport patronage (new this year), public transport mode share, road deaths (new this year), freight volumes and mode split, driver’s licence ownership, car ownership, vehicle fuel types (new this year), motor vehicle sales (new this year), emissions, and transport consumer costs.

How COVID crunched Melbourne’s public transport use – and the unlikely winner

Time marches on, as does the continuing influence of COVID on our transport habits (Editor’s note: And it most definitely hasn’t gone away!). This is the latest in a series of this type of article over the past few years on various Australian cities, and along with the stats it includes quotes from Monash University’s  Professor Graham Currie and Melbourne University’s John Stone.

“Victorians have ditched their mykis for their car keys, with the COVID-19 years and flexible working leaving a permanent dent in public transport use. Train, tram and bus passenger trips plunged to 40.9 million in October 2023, recently released government data shows, down 12.9 million trips – or 24% – since the same month in 2019.”

Bollards and ‘superblocks’: how Europe’s cities are turning on the car

“Most of Europe’s cities were not designed for cars. Their streets were once a place for a host of varied human activities: working, trading, socialising, playing. Getting from A to B, other than on foot, was a small part of the mix.

The arrival of the car in large numbers on European roads ended that in the 1950s. Streets were now for traffic, which must reach its destination as fast as possible … and have somewhere to park once it gets there. Cities changed, radically.

A fightback is now well under way, driven by a pressing need to cut air pollution and combat the climate crisis, and a wish to reclaim cities as pleasant places to live. Most major European cities now have schemes in place to reduce road traffic.”

Related iMOVE content: Traffic Congestion Info, Projects & Resources

Traffic Fatalities Are Up Almost Everywhere, But Hoboken Hasn’t Had One In Nearly 7 Years

On top of what the title of this article tells us about Hoboken, but in the same period traffic injuries are down about 40%. This article outlines the exact decisions and steps the city made under instruction by Mayor Ravi Bhalla’s ‘Vision Zero’ executive order.

Related iMOVE content: Road Safety: Info, Projects &; Resources

Big-name EVs: here are the new models launching for the first time in Australia

Australians’ appetite for EVs grew in 2023, and, if hopefully supply and pricing is right, with new models 2024 might see another uptick for this sector of the automotive market.

Related iMOVE content: Electric Vehicles: Info, Projects, and Resources

The electric vehicle revolution and the impact on shopping centres

Graham McCabe, Director of Urbis’ Transport Advisory service, shares his insights on the installation of EV chargers and the benefits to shopping centres.

“Like the cost of parking a car within the shopping centre car park, the speed of the chargers should be optimised to maximise the shopping centre’s trade without discouraging visitation by people with electric cars.”

New Victoria University of Wellington study: Biking and walking pays – so will more New Zealand cities catch on?

“oes walking and biking pay? Of course, it’s a lot better for our health than driving everywhere. But a new cost-benefit study published by Victoria University of Wellington and the New Zealand Centre for Sustainable Cities has found that a walking and cycling programme is a good return on investment. In other words: it’s also good for cities’ financial health.”

Related iMOVE content: Active Transport: Info, Projects, and Resources

Taking steps toward healthy & sustainable transport investment: A systematic review of economic evaluations in the academic literature on large-scale active transport infrastructure

And speaking of the economics of active transport, this new paper from Madison Bland, Matthew I. Burke and Kelly Bertolaccini, all of Griffith University.

“For cities seeking to promote active transport, overcoming the institutional practices of car-centric planning and investment is critical to redistributing funds toward dedicated walking and cycling infrastructure. Slowly, urban policy and research are expanding traditional mobility-centric economic evaluations beyond major road and rail projects.”

Related iMOVE projects:

• Evaluation of the Wagga Wagga Active Travel Plan
• Safer cycling and street design: A guide for policymakers