Sustainable Transport Forum and Workshops

New South Wales, April 2008.

The Forum

On Wednesday 2 April 2008, representatives from 21 councils in New South Wales converged at Parramatta Council Chambers to focus on sustainable transport issues and solutions.

Parramatta is home to the second largest public transport hub in Sydney and the council chambers are a 3-5 minutes walk from the station. Nevertheless, some attendees experienced first hand the limitations of a crowded and insufficiently connected public transport system.

The day kicked off with a forum during which six speakers from the professional, academic and government sectors delivered presentations covering the full range of transport-related issues and challenges that we currently face.

The speakers have kindly made their presentations available to all CCP councils. You can download their bios here [Word doc, 28KB] and you can download their presentations by clicking on the links below.

The speakers were:

Claudine Moutou, Senior Project Officer, Emissions Reduction Section, Department of Environment and Climate Change (DECC). Climate Change and Sustainable Transport. [PDF, 779KB]
John Stott, Vice-Chairperson, International Association of Public Transport (IUTP), Asia-Pacific Division. Serving the Towns and Suburbs- the forgotten infrastructure challenge [PDF, 799KB]
Colin Henson, Chair NSW Chapter, Planning Institute Australia (PIA); Principal ARUP. Planning and Business as Usual? [PDF, 1.2MB]
Dr Garry Glazebrook, Senior Lecturer, University of Technology, Sydney. Sustainable Transport Options for Local Government. [PDF, 1.7MB]
Prabaka Siva, manager Traffic and Transport, Manly Council. Active Transport. [PDF, 1.5MB]
Professor Ian Ker, CATALYST Consulting; Adjunct Associate Professor, Curtin University. Reflections on Sustainable Urban Transport Planning. [PDF, 1.4MB]
Paula Arcari, Sustainable Transport Project Manager, ICLEI Oceania. Trends, Issues and CCP Council Actions. [PDF, 737KB]

Presentations reflected the complexity of sustainable transport as a concept and aim, encompassing as it does multiple sectors. Topics covered included:

The scale of the problem and its context within the broader picture of national and global greenhouse gas emissions and climate change,
Peak oil and its implications for the future,
Social issues such as population growth, urban/regional expansion, social equity, social exclusion, ageing of society, health and well-being,
Various technological and infrastructure options and the opportunities/ limitations they present,
Examples of overseas initiatives and their applicability to the Australian context,
Ideas for improved transport planning and a new perspective on urban consolidation,
The role of policy as a solution,
New initiatives and activities at the state government level and the opportunities they present for increased local government engagement,
What local governments can do to progress the sustainable transport agenda both within their municipalities and regionally, and how they can do it.

There was some time during the presentations for questions and attendees were clearly engaged and keen to learn where and how they can make a difference. However, most of the questions and discussion took place after the presentations when there was a break for morning tea followed by half an hour for questions to a panel of the speakers.

The panel session could have comfortably taken up more than half an hour and several topics were raised for discussion/elaboration including Manly's free community Hop, Skip and Jump bus, electric vehicle options, parking policies in relation to local businesses and shopping centres, and calculating the cost of public transport vs private car use.

Feedback from attendees was very positive and all agreed that the presentations were of a high standard and met most of their expectations.

The Workshops

The forum drew to a close after the panel session, following which, the nine NSW councils currently engaged in the CCP Sustainable Transport Project stayed on for a series of workshops designed to help them progress their activities within council.

The nine councils are: Coffs Harbour, Mosman, Muswellbrook, North Sydney, Parramatta, Rockdale, Waverley, Wollongong and Woollahra.

For the first workshop session, councils were divided into two groups according to their project level. The first group were taken through the process of developing an Action Plan with recommendations and suggestions for how to facilitate this process within their own councils, and where ICLEI Oceania can offer support in this regard.

The discussion then proceeded to how best to avoid duplication and minimise workloads by incorporating the requirements for a sustainable transport action plan within council's current plans and strategies. Resourcing was a problem shared by these councils and ways to generate support and allocate funding were also discussed.

The second group focused on their priorities for the next 6-12 months - What factors/ strategies would be needed to make these happen and what opportunities existed for councils in NSW to work more collaboratively and regionally on sustainable transport. Participant's responses [Word doc, 44KB] were recorded and a key theme that emerged was the business-as-usual integration of sustainable transport in both council operations and the broader proposals process.

The final workshop of the day was Taking a Longer-Term View: Creating the Future [PDF, 1.2MB], facilitated by Prof. Ian Ker. In this session, Prof. Ker challenged the group to think differently about possible futures and the potential transport solutions that could lead us there.

The session provided an appropriate end to the day and generated some lively, innovative, and definitely out-of-the-box thinking about the type and scale of changes we would like to see over the next 30 years.

For further information, and to let us know about your council's transport actions, please contact SustainableTransport-anz@iclei.org

Cities for Climate Protection® (CCP®) Australia: implementing greenhouse action through a collaboration between the Australian Government and ICLEI Oceania. The CCP® Australia Program is funded by the Australian Government.