RP2015: carbon reductions and co-benefits: final report - part II

Describes baseline levels of active transport usage in Australian cities, and thus provides a platform from which future interventions in low carbon precinct planning and design can be assessed in terms of their capability to increase the levels of active transport. Executive Summary This report is the second output of the scoping study RP2015 ‘Carbon Reductions and Co - benefits: Literature and practice review of Australian policies relating urban planning and public health’ and provides an analysis of (current) base line levels of usage of the active transport modes (walking and cycling) in urban Australia. As such the report meets the Cooperative Research Centre for Low Carbon Living’s (CRC LCL) milestone R2.4. 2 ‘Base line survey of current levels of active transport usage, including unders tanding of the environmental and human health benefits in the studied communities (Living Labs) plus constraints on the uptake of those’. The analysis uses the VISTA (Victorian Integrated Survey of Travel and Activity) database collected by the Victorian Department of Transport, Planning and Local Infrastructure, which is a major household travel survey (HTS) conducted in Melbourne and major regional centres in Victoria. It contains comprehensive data on the daily travel and activity patterns of households and persons, and provides an authoritative record of travel for all purposes by people from all socio - economic groupings, including data on the usage of the active transport modes for their own purposes and as part of trip chains (i.e. travel by all modes that can include trip segments of walking and cycling). Travel in Melbourne is dominated by the private car, which accounts for nearly half of trip numbers, over 60 per cent of travel distance, and just over half of travel time consumed. In terms of trip n umbers, walking is the second most popular mode (22 per cent), just ahead of (private) vehicle passenger (21 per cent), although the latter is the second most used mode in terms of distance and time. Walking only accounts for 2.0 per cent of travel distance. Distances travelled on foot would be expected to be much less than those for the wheeled modes, but walking is the third highest mode in terms of travel time (12.7 per cent of all travel time). Public transport, taken as the combination of train, tram, school bus and public bus, accounts for 8.2 per cent of trip numbers, 10.7 per cent of travel distance and 10.6 per cent of travel time. Train is the dominant public transport mode used in the region, especially for distance travelled. Bicycle use is small , constituting 1.5 per cent of trip numbers, 1.0 per cent of distance travelled and 2.1 per cent of travel time of all travel undertaken in the Melbourne region. Variations to the overall modal split statistics by trip purpose are of particular interest fo r the active modes. Walking is the most popular mode for education trips accounting for just over 40 per cent total trip numbers. Similarly, it is the most used mode in terms of travel time (at 26.5 per cent, although noting that the second most popular mode, vehicle passenger, is 26.4 per cent of travel time). In terms of travel distance, walking is only 6.3 per cent of the usage for education trips. Cycling only accounts for about two per cent of education travel by trip numbers and travel time, and one per cent by travel distance. Recreation trips include both travel to a place to take part in recreation (e.g. playing tennis) and travel that is the recreation, which will include walking and cycling activities. This is evident in the modal splits for cycling under recreation, which provides 5.7 per cent of trip numbers, 4.6 per cent of travel distance and 8.8 per cent of travel time – these are the highest percentages recorded for cycling under any of the trip purposes. Walking emerges as a universal activi ty, undertaken by many people and at similar levels across the socio - economic groups, whereas cycling activity is very much undertaken by a small minority and shows differences between different groups, especially in terms of age and (household) income. This finding for cycle usage needs to be put in the context of the observation that overall household bicycle ownership is comparable to household car ownership. As assessed from VISTA, just over two per cent of people reported cycle usage for transport purp oses, while 22.8 per cent of people reported walking for transport purposes. A further general observation on travel activity is that the distributions of travel (as measure by trip length frequency distributions) are asymmetric distributions, strongly ske wed to the right (i.e. the upper tail) and thus implying that some users of each mode (by trip purpose and socio - economic characteristics) make much greater usage of the modes compared to the population at large. Given this feature of travel, the best descriptor of travel; activity (trip numbers, travel distance and travel time) is thus the median value rather than the mean, and variations in the distributions are better represented by (say) considering percentile values rather than the standard deviation. Access to public transport was identified as a significant task undertaken by the active modes, especially walking. The computed distance results for public transport access and egress include median walking distances of (1) train access 0.61 km, egress 0.6 4 km, (2) tram access 0.34 km, egress 0.32 km, and (3) public bus access 0.47 km, egress 0.48 km, and 85th percentile distances of (1) train access 1.19 km, egress 1.21 km, (2) tram access 0.71 km, egress 0.73 km, and (3) public bus access 0.99 km, egress 1.02 km. A stark reality emerges from this study, which must have important consideration for policy development aimed at encouraging greater use of the active modes: the majorities of people and households did not undertake any reportable active transport usage. Indeed cycling, in particular, is a transport activity only undertaken by a very small proportion of the population. In the Melbourne region, 97.9 per cent of people reported no cycling activity, while 77.2 per cent reported no walking activity (an d 75.8 per cent of people reported no walking or cycling travel activity), i.e. less than a quarter of the population undertook (reportable) travel on foot and just over two per cent travelled anywhere by bicycle. There are differences in both gender and a ge group in these results. Cycling activity is concentrated in the age groups between 10 - 54 years. Walking is most common in the 5 - 39 year age groups, and at least 20 per cent of people across the 5 - 79 year age groups also report walking. The very young (0 - 4 years) and the very old (90+ years) are much less likely to walk. Females participate slightly less in cycling but slightly more in walking than males.