Improving Darebin’s streets: The community speaks

Our Your Street, Your Say: Better streets for Darebin project, run with Melbourne’s Darebin City Council and La Trobe University has been completed, and its final report is available here for download.

This project was driven by Darebin City Council’s goal of improving its transportation and street network using the voices from the community. In addition to the community input, the project also involved a literature review, and spatial analysis of transport-related data and community feedback to identify main problems and their locations.

The geographic scope of this work took in three suburbs, Reservoir West, Preston West, and Thornbury West.

The primary objective of the project is to unlock the potential of streets to better serve the needs of the wider community as public places by identifying a series of placemaking and mobility enhancement projects.

Transport issues and solutions raised by the community

Darebin City Council (DCC) engaged with local community to understand their transport issues, help to pinpoint key geographical areas of concern and garner community input on possible solutions to concerns raised.

Key issues raised by the community fell broadly fell into five categories:

1. Vehicles
2. General
3. Walking
4. Cycling
5. Public transport

From these categories, vehicle submissions comprised 40% of responses, general submissions 24%, walking 22%, cycling 12% and public transport a relatively limited 2% of all submissions.

Many of the concerns raised did not fall into a distinct category with several overlaps between submissions noted.

Toplined below are some of the key issues and solution suggestions from the community.

Vehicle concerns and solutions

Contributors cited speeding traffic as a primary concern. Road safety concerns and the risk of damage to people, cars and infrastructure plus pollution (noise and air) considerations were mentioned. The high volume of traffic leaving congested main thoroughfares to find residential ‘rat runs’ was also highlighted.

Amongst solutions from respondents was a reduced speed limit and the creation of additional no-through roads and a ban on trucks in residential streets.

Car parking on narrow streets was cited as a cause of congestion, making the streets difficult to navigate and negatively impacting visibility for road users. Safety and accessibility of cycling lanes was also an issue, with other respondents indicating they were concerned about losing parking or the lack of available parking.

Among solutions offered – removal of permit parking near roundabouts and intersections, permit parking plus additional parking for the elderly and people with disabilities.

General concerns and solutions

The most common general concern was that areas felt ‘uncared for’ due to rubbish dumping, overgrown vegetation, lack of facilities and degraded or uneven ramps and paths. Other concerns were around safety, the lack of clear signage for motorists, street lighting and the lack of or poor quality of street furniture.

Amongst suggested solutions – increasing facilities available (e.g) provision of more garbage bins, public toilets and sporting facilities and installing more street furniture, in appropriate settings.

Pedestrian concerns and solutions

Pedestrian safety and the ability to walk safely in Darebin was a primary concern. The main issues raised – significant amount of speeding traffic, heavy vehicles using residential streets and a lack of safe crossings and footpaths especially near schools, shops and on main roads.

Solutions offered from submissions included reducing speed limits, installing additional footpaths and pedestrian crossings (automated and zebra) and improving signage and line markings.

Cycling concerns and solutions

Safety concerns around lack of cycling infrastructure, particularly in the context of children, families with prams/cargo bikes and people with mobility devices were cited. Safety concerns around several schools and retail areas were noted from respondents.

Amongst community suggestions were installing more dedicated and connected bike lanes, bike loops around retail centres, improved lighting along bike trails and the closure of some streets to cars.

Literature review

The literature review provided an overview of innovative Placemaking solutions from local and international sources.

Historically, we’ve considered how to factor motor vehicles into our streetscapes and roads for transport but innovations to our built environment and transport modes are changing how people utilise our streets – “streets must support multi-dimensional activities”.

Research highlights the benefits of discouraging car use where possible and promoting more active modes of transport using placemaking techniques and micro-scale interventions (where appropriate) as smaller, faster ways of implementing change which often has beneficial flow on effects for related concerns.

Of consideration for urban planners and designers is how we use streets now and use streets in the future which. Shifting away from our traditional reliance on cars will require a “range of changes related to both the social and built environment”.

Data analyses and findings

The report contains several maps to represent findings from the community feedback on transport and traffic for various project areas. The work conducted presents the finding of the analysis of spatial data on data sets related to road crashes, traffic volume and speed, road hierarch and traffic management devices, bicycle network and bicycle hoops and school locations against road crashes and traffic volume speed.

Recommendations

The final report’s recommendations were considered with a lens on council and community needs, the objective traffic and transport related data plus the advocacy work and projects already undertaken by DCC.
Twenty key traffic sites were identified from the work with a variety of recommendations and concept designs provided. (see page 57).

Through the analysis of data and findings on priority areas highlighted by the community, ten areas were identified as a top priority (page 48). These priority interventions were split into three tiers based on parameters of safety, cost and the complexity of solutions (e.g scope of work etc). Eight of the Tier 1 projects were deemed to be “low cost, could offer immediate impact and were ‘doable’ at council level”. The design interventions recommended related mainly to road reserve and transportation related issues.

Many of the ‘general’ issues identified from feedback were reconciled as matters to be redirected to decision-making departments in council.

Download the report

Download your copy of the final report, Your Street Your Say, by clicking the button below.

Included in the 76-page report is an overview of transport issues and solutions raised by the community, innovative placemaking solutions, spatial analysis of community feedback, recommendations and design interventions, and more.