Fundamentals of Planning & Design for Walking

Industry Training Courses - Walking

A Brand New Course

For a number of years, an industry training course (developed for NZTA and its prior organisations) has existed for cycling.  Now, with the development of appropriate design manuals and policy work, the time has come for a walking course.  Engineers and planners with an interest or mandate for walking, plus interested members of walking advocacy groups, are invited to attend the new course being offered in a number of locations around New Zealand this year.  You'll learn about the policies and practices that can make our towns and cities better for walking from leading practitioners under the leadership of Tim Hughes of NZTA. 

There are many reasons why New Zealanders need to start walking more and more often.  Just a few of them are congestion, pollution, peak oil, the obesity epidemic, climate change.  And the new NZ Transport Strategy encourages increased active transport activity levels.  Yet many barriers exist to discourage people from walking - physical, social, cultural and institutional.

Fundamentals of Planning and Design for Walking

Streets around the world are being opened up again to people on foot, with spectacular benefits to communities in terms of traffic and personal safety, economic well-being, community cohesiveness and children's health.

New guidance and tools published by the NZTA enable better practice in meeting user needs.  This course aims to ensure participants are inspired, understand the key principles behind the new guidance, and are equipped with the basic skills needed to apply them.  The issues will be illustrated in practice by an audit of existing conditions for walking in nearby streets.  Participants will work on project examples, choosing the appropriate pedestrian facilities and grappling with those "devil in the detail" design issues that make all the difference.

The course has been run as a trial in Nelson, Dunedin and Christchurch and after a number of refinements, is now ready for general use.  NZTA is keen to see as many practitioners as possible attend this course.

Good urban pedestrian environment

Course Presenters

Course presenters will initially be Glen Koorey and Tim Hughes. Glen is Senior Lecturer in Transportation Engineering at the University of Canterbury.  He teaches courses in transportation and traffic planning, traffic engineering and management, highway geometric design, and road safety.  Glen also teaches planning and design for walking and cycling to students in the Master of Engineering in Transportation programme.  He has a specialist interest in sustainable transport.

Tim Hughes has over 25 years experience as a road safety engineer, managing projects to provide guidance on provision for pedestrians with different needs and auditing new works to assess walkability and ensure that they are walking friendly.  He led the development of various NZ guidelines for walking, including the Pedestrian Planning and Design Guide (2008) and RTS 14, Guidelines for facilities for blind and vision-impaired pedestrians.  These documents will be used in the course and all participants will receive a complimentary copy of the new planning and design guide to keep, as part of the course materials.

Registration and "Early Bird" Rates

Course numbers are limited to 25.  A minimum of 10 attendees is required to ensure a course goes ahead - please register early to take advantage of "early bird" discounted rates.

Anybody involved in land transport should consider taking this course, from the new graduate to the engineer with 20+ years experience.

2010 Courses

Dates and locations for 2010 courses have not yet been confirmed, but  please contact Helen Woodhouse for further information or to register your interest.

Course Outline

1. Planning policy and context; funding overview
2. Pedestrian characteristics and preferences
3. Walkability - approaches to provision
4. Network components - overview of options
5. Footpath design
6. Crossing design
7. On-street audit and feedback (group exercise)
8. Network planning and implementation
9. Project facility selection and evaluation exercise
10. Project evaluation tips and exercise