Melb: Think differently and connect
Posted by admin on 09/23/07 in Sustainable Transport Issues
The Age: Think differently and connect
There is no doubt that 21st-century urban living presents us with some real challenges. Getting enough physical activity into our lives as our girths grow and traffic congestion infuriates us. Controlling levels of depression and anxiety, as isolation and work and life demands weigh heavily on us. And worrying about our safety. (Evening current affairs shows tell us to even fear our neighbours.)
Citylink 2 is a new idea — it isn’t another tunnel under Melbourne linking highways at opposite ends of the city. Instead, it is a major infrastructure program to connect Melburnians to each other, to our environment and to ourselves. It will result in people being more physically active, in feeling much more connected and safe in their neighbourhoods, and having more time for their emotional and spiritual health.
The program’s first phase would involve connecting people through increased use of public transport, and more walking and cycling trips. It should start through University of Melbourne and RMIT, two major generators of car trips through the city.
These institutions can look to the University of Vancouver, which lifted transit use by 56 per cent in the first five years of its similar program. That was achieved through flexible starting times for lectures, a rise in the cost of car parking, an increase in public transport services, improved bicycle facilities, and the implementation of car-pooling programs.
The university introduced a special cheap travel pass for its students, providing unlimited access to bus, train and ferry services. It has been one of the most effective means of changing travel patterns.
Phase two of Citylink 2 would include the introduction of a congestion tax, like those in London and New York. It’s not that I’m anti-car; it just shouldn’t be my sole method of transport. If instead of 10 solo car trips to and from work a week, I cut down to two or four (using public transport, cycling or car pooling for the balance), then my carbon footprint diminishes. And I increase the actual number of footprints I make!
The second phase is also about connecting us socially. It does this in three ways.
The first is a major expansion of the “Street Life” program, borrowed from Port Phillip Council and used by the City of Melbourne. This would actively encourage community activities, literally in the streets. It would allow people to get to know each other in their neighbourhoods, to feel more connected and safer.
Greater use would provide schools with extra income. And the more utilised schools are, the more secure these spaces will become. Schools can also provide opportunities for groups who, by virtue of ethnicity or lack of income and education, are often excluded from participation in civic life.
The third phase of Citylink 2 addresses our emotional and spiritual health. We often talk about being materially rich and time poor, but I think we are becoming materially rich and emotionally poor. The irony is that if we want to do more, we need to slow down and spend some time looking inwards. If we want to care for others, we need to start by nurturing our own emotions and spirit.
The parks and ovals of Melbourne are special and important places to sit quietly, and to enjoy as a work group or as a family, or to play sport. We need to protect and expand our green spaces. On the one hand we need places to exercise, and on the other hand most of us need special places at some stage in our lives. When the world closes in on us, when work becomes all too much, we need a place to go.
We could even reclaim rooftops in the city and turn them into green spaces. And we could open up our churches, not only for prayer but for silent reflection or meditation by people of other faiths, or of no particular faith at all.
We have choices. We can stay in our cars, isolated from one another and increasingly in fear of each other, as we rush on our daily treadmills. Or we can choose differently and, by investing as much in a Citylink 2 as we did in the first Citylink project, become more active, more connected, happier and safer.
Rob Moodie is a professor of global health at the University of Melbourne’s Nossal Institute for Global Health.
Your say
Action stations
We should use a very under-utilised space in the centre of the city, the magnificent Flinders Street railway building. The architecture is beautiful and it has been the soul, the meeting place and the symbol of Melbourne for a very long time.
Keep it green
Melbourne needs to develop what it has and not concentrate on ferris wheels, icons, glitzy venues and great events.
Melbourne is a beautiful city of gardens and we need to preserve them and increase our green space. Spend money on the bay and beaches and continue what The Age is doing to promote the Yarra. Transport needs to be welcoming to visitors, green buildings are necessary, and a green image is necessary if we are to attract people.
Exhaustive process
I think we should harness the emissions from the CityLink exhaust stacks and use the pressure to pump water from the Yarra to the equivalent height through a turbine, which in turn would create the energy required for the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.
Super-charged plan
Make Melbourne a battery-powered transport city by providing battery-powered vehicles that use green energy to charge. They are viable (unlike fuel cell cars), genuinely carbon neutral and pollution free.
Vehicle options could include: range-extending battery-assisted bikes; scooters, motor bikes, all-electric cars ; buses and other commercial vehicles.
RHYS FREEMAN, CERES, Brunswick East
Future Melbourne will guide Melbourne’s future from 2010. Submit ideas to: futuremelbourne@theage.com.au.
You must include your full name, address and phone number.
For more information, visit: www.futuremelbourne.com.au
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