Award
Research
Winner
Roger Boulter
In brief
Roger is an international authority on planning for walking and cycling. He has led national strategy development in New Zealand and previously in the UK. He has collated New Zealand history in considerable detail and breadth.
The book is current; including the Accessible Streets rules package and Innovating Streets Fund.
The detail
(From the nomination form.)
Roger’s observations and research about active transport are an excellent basis for policy development and implementing change to create mode shift. However his arguments have relied on his specific involvement in policy development and individual projects.
To make his knowledge more widely available and to delineate the not always edifying history of transport planning, Roger has compressed his knowledge into an accessible book.
It’s been a huge amount of work to condense New Zeaalnd’s history of transport planning for walking and cycling.
He says “Integrated transport planning is key. From 1980s early studies, right through to those covering New Zealand’s main centres today, contradictions remain un-addressed. Outcomes including continuing traffic congestion, poor public transport, and unsafe walking and cycling.
Walking is particularly neglected, and struggles to gain traction, in a transport planning culture based around ‘getting from A to B’ rather than ‘lingering’.”
Many projects that address both walking and cycling give lip service to walking and concentrate on the apparently more glamorous cycling angle while far more people walk and also need considerable improvements in the public realm. This book will be useful for planners, advocates and politicians. Its arguments are clear and well-researched. I look forward to it being used in the education of a new generation of transport planners.
This book is relevant to the whole of New Zraaland and may be of interest across the Tasman too.
The time on this project has been at Roger’s own cost. The book will be published on the internet and can be made available as a pdf now. It will be an excellent reference.
Potential applicability of initiative to other locations or organisations: Applicable to New Zealand Transport Agency, MoT, Auckland Transport, Councils and both walking and cycling advocates.
There is no comprehensive source of history and research in the New Zealand context.