Revitalising Metropolitan Adelaide
Submission for the Planning Strategy for Metropolitan Adelaide
by Michael Robertson for Urban Ecology Australia, 2005.8.3
(See also shorter version of this article: Revitalising Adelaide)
1. Introduction
Urban Ecology Australia promotes people and nature friendly cities. We recommend that Adelaide's urban environment be improved by reducing motor vehicle traffic, greening local streets and making them safer for children, calming main roads, and revitalising urban centres with mixed use development.
2. Urban Centres
Urban centres, whether the Metropolitan Centre, regional centers, or small local centres, are important public spaces whose characteristics can make a significant difference to the quality of life of the residents and workers who use them.
The range of activities and facilities at urban centres should be maximised. Apart from making these centres more interesting places for locals and visitors, concentrating a range of activities into urban centres better integrates the life of the city with its public transport system, thus reducing car dependency.
Years of urban planning policy which tended to separate different functions, eg residential from commercial, and which designed the urban fabric to facilitate access by car, have made many urban centres rather bleak places, eg an island of shops in a sea of car-parking space. The design of many large stores and shopping centres, which confront the exterior environment with expanses of blank wall, has not helped.
Urban centres can be revitalised with mixed use development - a mixture of residential, commercial and community functions, with a variety of types within each. Thus residential development should cater for a range of income groups and lifestyles; commercial development should encourage enterprises of all kinds to cluster side by side. Community facilities such as libraries and meeting places will pack in more activity, and help centres remain active even when shops are closed.
Residential development suffused throughout urban centres helps improve security through passive surveillance, and by preventing the public space feeling "abandoned" after-hours.
The outdoor spaces at urban centres, especially where activity focuses, should consist of gardens filled trees and other vegetation, and threaded by pedestrian and cycle paths. Surface carparks, if any, should be small and located at the periphery. Contrast many suburban centres now, which have large carparks at their focus, with little-used greenspace, mostly grass dotted with a few trees, on the periphery.
3. Regional Centres
Regional centres should be developed to provide many of the functions that the Metropolitan Centre now provides such as a comprehensive range of shops and other services, offices for government departments and major firms, and (active) cultural facilities. The shopping facilities at most regional centres are fairly well developed. But office and cultural facilities need to be increased.
The tendency towards sprawl at such centres should be counteracted, to bring all activities within easy walking distance of each other, and focused on the public transport hub. Regional centres should incorporate medium density residential development, to improve security through passive surveillance, and to allow more people to live within easy access to the various facilities that such centres provide, not least the public transport interchange usually located there.
The mix of shops should include not just (chain) stores with conventional goods and services, but also a range of more marginal or experimental shops, eg shops which emerge as an extension of people's hobbies. Setting aside shop-space with low rental for alternative, specialised ventures will add to the variety and character of commercial activity at these centres.
4. The Metropolitan Centre
The Metropolitan Centre (the Adelaide Central Business District) should give priority for specialised activities that need a metropolitan-wide catchment to support them. Offices in the metro centre should be used to bring together people in specialised areas to work together and share ideas, perhaps one or two days a week, while spending remaining work-time at regional offices, or local telecommuting centres closer to homes.
The Adelaide metro centre currently hosts a legal cluster and a university cluster. The university cluster should be enhanced with more facilities for research and student life.
The Metropolitan Centre also host an arts cluster, which should be enhanced. Facilities such as cheap studio and gallery space dedicated to experimental arts and cultural activities, will help Adelaide emulate larger cities in its cultural and artistic life.
5. Local Centres
Local centres within walking distance of homes should pack in a variety of services and workplaces, to enable many people to walk to work, and in general to reduce people's need to leave their local area on a daily basis, thus increasing the life of local areas as well as reducing car use.
6. Local Shopping Centres
Small shopping centres offering a variety of products should be established within walking distance of most homes. The following measures will help small shopping centres maximise the variety of goods and services available, despite small staff numbers, limited storage space, and a small customer base.
To better supply small shopping centres and keep them well-stocked despite fluctuations in demand, improved just-in-time delivery systems need to be developed. Rather than specialised vans supplying shops with a small range of goods once a day, or week, "mail runs" several times a day could supply a shop with a large variety of goods from regional, multi-product warehouses, so that shops could be supplied within an hour or two of putting in a restocking order. This will allow shops to maintain smaller inventories with a greater variety of goods in limited storage space.
To allow a small number of staff to be conversant with a wide variety of products, and so better assist customers, online information systems should be developed to provide just-in-time information about all products sold, so increasing the effective knowledge of staff and customers.
To allow small workshops to service a wider variety of domestic appliances (fridges, washing machines, televisions, etc) appliances should be designed for the simpler maintenance using a smaller range of components. This may require greater standardisation of components across models or indeed brands.
To allow a wider provision of goods at small centres, smaller production and storage facilities should be developed. For example, smaller bakeries and butcher shops that can operate as departments in larger shops, with staff sharing between departments, yet provide the same range and quality of goods currently available at larger, stand-alone shops.
Consolidation of health services into one centre would allow the same services to be delivered in smaller buildings with less staff. For example, waiting rooms and customer service staff could be shared between doctors, dentists, and pharmacies.
7. Telecommuting Centres
Telecommuting centres are offices that anyone can use, regardless of the organisation they work for. This allows office workers to walk to work much of the time. (Workers would still travel regularly to central offices for face-to-face contact with fellow workers in their organisation, but perhaps only one or two days per week.)
Working from home should also be encouraged. But telecommuting centres can increase productivity by providing a professional atmosphere and good facilities.
Telecommuting centres should be established across the metropolitan area - at every shopping centre, school, college, hospital, railway station, bus interchange, etc, to maximise the number of homes within walking distance of one.
They should be closely linked with the public transport system (eg be adjacent to a frequently serviced public transport stop).
Current technology may not allow the establishment of small, flexible-production factories, so that factory workers can walk to work regardless of the firm they work for, or the type of product they make, but does allow the equivalent for office workers, to a certain extent.
8. Whole-of-Government Offices
Small, whole-of-government offices should be established within walking distance of most homes. To provide a one-stop government service-point for all three levels of government, and as telecommuting centres for government and other workers living locally.
To allow a small staff to be conversant with the functions of all government departments, as required to assist the public, the complexity of government, at least as it confronts the public, needs to be reduced. For example, the large variety of documents that people need to fill out, to receive benefits or fulfill obligations, should be consolidated into a much smaller set, so that a single government worker can be familiar with all of them.
Whole-of-government offices and workers would be better equipped to break down "silos" - lack of communication and coordination between government departments - and better able to develop coordinated, cross-department solutions.
9. Car Parks
Many urban centres are blighted by (mostly treeless) surface car parks. Such centres can be revitalised by reducing the surface car parking area and reusing the land for buildings and gardens. The need for surface car parks can be reduced through a combination of multi-story car parks and by shifting people from cars onto public transport, bicycles and footpaths.
If the Adelaide CBD relied on cars and surface car parks to the extend that most suburban centres do, it would be a very dreary and lifeless place indeed.
Surface car parks are acceptable if they have permeable surfaces and lots of trees and other vegetation, hence function as greenspace. (However permeable surfaces are only suitable for all day parking, such as at railway stations, and would get churned up if used as a shopping centre car park, with cars constantly coming and going.)
10. The Transport System
Currently the people-movement task in Adelaide is dominated by the private car. This is because of the poor service offered by public transport, road environments that discourage pedestrians and cyclists, and urban sprawl which increases the distances people must travel to access workplaces, shops and other facilities. Page 5 Improvements in non-car alternatives such as public transport, and cycling and walking paths, will not only reduce pollution, resource consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions, but will free up land for gardens, buildings and other uses that enhance the life of the city.
11. Local Streets
In order to improve the walkability and "cyclability" of local streets, traffic speeds should be slowed, and the quality of the road environment improved through increased density of vegetation.
Many streets with low traffic densities are unnecessarily wide. The paved area on streets with lower traffic densities (eg most local streets) should be no wider than 6 metres. Parking spaces liable to all-day parking (not frequent coming and going) should be unpaved (eg converting bitumen strips with car parking spaces to nature strips with car parking spaces). The number of parking spaces on local streets should be reduced to make room for more trees and other vegetation.
Local streets should be safe for children to play on. Thus cars on local streets should be slowed to 30 km/h or less to enable them to slow down or stop quickly. Hence the need for speed limits combined with physical traffic calming features such as speed humps and chicanes.
12. Main Roads
Main roads are often unpleasant environments due to noise and air pollution from motor-vehicle traffic. Motor vehicle traffic should be reduced, to improve the local environment and free up road space for cycle lanes and bus priority lanes.
Main roads with two lanes each way should be narrowed to one lane each way, with the reclaimed lanes dedicated to buses and trucks while leaving room for bicycle lanes.
The speed limit on main roads should be reduced, eg from 60 to 50 km/h, in order to increase safety for all road users, especially pedestrians and cyclists.
13. Road Use Charging
Reducing traffic will probably require road-use limits in addition to good alternatives to car use. Congestion is an effective limit for traffic on main roads, but should not be used as such because it causes pollution and consumes fuel. Instead, road-use charging should be used, with the price set to keep traffic density within acceptable limits during peak periods.
Cameras at major intersections could read bar codes on cars that identified prepaid accounts and deducted a small fee as the car went past.
This would effectively auction the right to private vehicle use beyond the local area in peak periods to the highest bidder. Any disadvantage to people on low incomes would be offset by good alternatives such as frequent buses not caught up in congestion.
14. Cycle Lanes
A network of cycle paths should be established across Adelaide, including on or next to all main roads. Cycle lanes on main roads should be continuous - not disappear suddenly, dropping cyclists into other traffic. Where cyclists and motor vehicles are expected to share lanes, this should be clearly indicated, so that drivers will anticipate and respect cyclists in their path.
Cycling has a great potential in Adelaide as a cheap, non-polluting alternative to the car that Page 6 keeps riders fit and healthy. It should be encouraged.
15. Public Transport
To make the public transport network an effective substitute for car-use, public transport services should be made more frequent, faster, and more reliable. The public transport system should be easy to use, and should minimise the need for passengers to consult timetables to organise their journey.
Creating bus priority lanes and intersections will make buses more reliable, and shorten journey times.
Headways of 10 minutes or less on most routes most of the time will allow many passengers to use the system without need for timetables and with the assurance of a good connection between services.
When, because of low demand, scheduled headways increase beyond 10 minutes, the schedule should be regular, and so, easy to remember.
Passengers should be able to determine service schedules and journey durations by consulting a map rather than a timetable. Schedules for a route at given stop (eg a "timed stop") could be specified by a small set of times for changes in frequency. For example, a route-stop could be specified as "5.25-20-6.25-10-20.25-20-23.25" (or shorter notation), where "20" indicates scheduled headways of 20 minutes, and "10" indicates scheduled headways of 10 minutes or less. (If all routes had a 20-10-20 timing then only the times, 5.25-6.25-20.25-23.25 need be stipulated. If the first hour on all routes has 20 minute headways, followed by 14 hours of 10, and finally 3 hours of 20, then only the start time 5.25 need be stipulated.)
More legible routes would make map reading easier.
Bus routes should go in straight lines wherever possible and avoid meandering. Exception: variable route buses which depart temporarily from the main route to drop people close to their door.
The number of bus routes should be minimised, and all should operate on weekdays, weekends, evenings and public holidays. Exception: extra peak hour services. Plus late night services, when not all routes need to operate.
16. Buses
Increasing bus frequency on most routes will require enlarging the bus fleet. New buses should consist mostly of minibuses with 10 to 20 seats. Most of the buses in the current fleet are larger - 30 to 60 seats; they do not fit well down narrow, winding roads, and are wasteful of fuel when only carrying a few passengers.
The new minibuses should have improved fuel efficiency, comparable to the advances made by hybrid cars.
They should allow rapid boarding by wheelchairs without driver intervention (at least at bus stops with suitable platforms), to reduce dwell time.
Ticket checking should be streamlined to reduce dwell time at bus stops where many passenger come on board.
17. Bicycles on Buses
Bicycles can be taken on trains in Adelaide, which greatly increases their range. But not all parts of Adelaide are within easy cycling distance of a train station. A selection of bus routes should be made into bicycle carriers, in particular, routes going up into the Adelaide Hills.
Bicycle carrying buses should be designed so that bicycles can roll straight onto the bus and be secured inside, to minimise loading dwell-time.
18. Cars
The development of fuel efficient low-pollution cars such as hybrid cars should be encouraged (eg through fuel-efficiency standards). However, replacing all current cars with fuel-efficient cars will take many years, will be expensive, and will continue Adelaide's car dominance, with consequent loss of safety, loss of land, and lack of alternatives for those without access to a car.
Upgrading the public transport fleet to fuel-efficient vehicles will be cheaper than upgrading the car fleet, because far-fewer vehicles are used more extensively. Good public transport, safe commuter cycling paths, and the development of car sharing will further reduce the need for car ownership.
19. Car Sharing
Car sharing gives people access to a car without having to own one. A variety of vehicles available for short term hire, stationed within walking distance of people's homes, would allow people to use a car only when needed, and to choose the type of car (van, truck) that best suited their immediate needs.
Car sharing allows cars to be used more often, and so reduces the number of cars that the community requires.
It allows people to pay only for the time used and kilometres driven, with minimal up-front costs. This advantages those who only drive occasionally, preferring use public transport, walk or cycle for most journeys.
A metropolitan-wide car sharing system would allow one driver to drive a car from A to B, and then return it to the system so that another driver can pick it up and drive it to C, etc. (Some coordination might be needed to ensure that every car-sharing station remained stocked with a variety of vehicles.)
20. Conclusion
The need to reduce fuel consumption from motorised traffic, in the face of global warming and the rising cost of oil, can work in with improvements to the urban structure. In short, cheap oil has led to sub-optimal cities. The need to rethink urban transport arrangements gives Adelaide an opportunity to rectify this.
Shifting Adelaide over to a non-car dominated city can be facilitated by government through planning policy, infrastructure improvements, and changes in workplace organisation (more telecommuting). This will help get a good outcome (a people and nature friendly city) with minimal cost.
2005.10.14