The lead story in last Saturday’s Dominion Post was unequivocal: “Capital Workers Ditching Cars”, it said.
Stuff, the online equivalent, had a considerably less dramatic headline for the same story:
Wellingtonians among Australasia’s keenest public transport users but still keen to improve: http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/national/88145611/Wellingtonians-among-Australasias-keenest-public-transport-users-but-still-keen-to-improve
But the message is much the same.
That’s good news at the start of a year in which important decisions are likely to be made about the future of transport in Wellington. The NZTA/WCC/Greater Wellington Let’s Get Welly Moving project is running half-day workshops in February which will represent the first opportunity for the public to get to grips with LGWM’s transport thinking for Wellington in the wake of the defeat of the proposed Basin Reserve flyover.
Will LGWM’s transport thinking reflect recent developments in transport, mobility and access? Will it allow for a rapidly changing transport environment in which the need to:
- reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transport
- increase resilience to climate change and natural disasters, and
- account for improvements in light rail, growing demand for walking and cycling infrastructure, the rise of electric vehicles and vehicle sharing, and the prospect of autonomous vehicles
makes traditional “predict and provide” road planning increasingly outdated?
February should start to tell that story. Let’s hope it’s a good one, and if it isn’t, let’s be prepared to work to make it better.