MANY enlightened city planners are becoming aware of the benefits of reducing the impact of motor vehicles in the community hubs of their urban environment.
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Many cities throughout the world are recognising that providing an environment that encourages alternatives to driving private motor vehicles such as walking and cycling are beneficial to the community as a whole.
Methods of getting from A to B such as walking or cycling are referred to as active travel.
This term describes aspects of healthy living and active forms of transport that offer a wide range of benefits which include increased capacity and reduced congestion of the overall transport networks, reduced environmental impacts, improved public health and reduced healthcare costs and improved community wellbeing and social cohesion.
In order to create an environment that encourages the community to walk and cycle more it is necessary to create an infrastructure that is motivating, supportive and safe.
Many cities throughout the world have developed an active travel plan.
Orange is one of those cities.
The objectives stated in Orange’s Active Travel Plan are to encourage more residents to walk and cycle to destinations in Orange and to improve the safety and convenience of walking and cycling in Orange.
One of the recommended methods of improving safety in areas used by high numbers of pedestrians and cyclists is the reduction of speed limits in places where people congregate for purposes of shopping, education, entertainment, business, work or socialisation.
Such a place is Orange’s Central Business District (CBD).
This is acknowledged in Orange’s Active Travel Plan, which advocates the reduction of the speed limit to 40 kilometres per hour in Orange’s CBD.
Orange’s Active Travel Plan was discussed at a recent council meeting. Councillors were generally positive about the document, but disappointingly rejected the proposal to reduce the speed limit to 40 kilometres per hour in the CBD.
The reasons for doing so mainly were concerned with the difficulty of policing the limit, an assumption that motorists can’t reach a speed of 40km/hr due to conditions of congestion and the possibility of being booked in increasing numbers by police.
The rejection of a reduction of the speed limit in the area in question is disappointing.
Council’s decision implies that it is more concerned about the impact and inconvenience a reduced speed limit will have on cars in the CBD rather than on people.
