The humble footpath could be the answer to being more active, with new research showing regional Australians living in “walkable towns” travelled 75 minutes more on foot each week.
The humble footpath could be the answer to being more active, with new research showing regional Australians living in “walkable towns” travelled 75 minutes more on foot each week.
Big shock.
Walking more popular when walking convenient and comfortable. But seriously, stories about this are important, because councils clearly do need some imports to start doing better.
It’s astonishing, people walk more when they can walk.
I feel as though, when councils build walking and riding infrastructure people just get on with the business of happily using it, but there’s a vocal minority of drivers who scream blue bloody murder at any encroachment on their god given entitlement to scream around the burbs at 10kmh over the limit.
Recently they narrowed a section of road here to accommodate nice new paths on either side. It’s already in a 40km/h tourism / beach front area. The usual idiots were apoplectic. There were even some “won’t someone think of the caravans” type diagrams showing the narrow points and how two caravans traveling opposite directions wouldn’t be able to go through at the same time or some such.
In the City Of Melbourne LGA, there was a group running last council elections called “Rip up the Bike lanes” - lead by a guy who was angry at bike infrastructure being around Lygon St because he thought they hurt the business of the cafes and restaurants there. Apparently bike riders never buy coffee or gelato.
There was a similar thing on Chapel Street with a business association leading protests against bike lanes because they said that changing parking to bike lanes would hurt their businesses (apparently bike riders never go shopping for overpriced clothing either).
There’s been fun studies that show shop owners tend to think more parking = more patrons, when the opposite is true