Clarence recently dug up a few unused nuggets from last year's junket to Melbourne, Australia. Watch and see how curbside space in residential neighborhoods has been repurposed for plantings that double as traffic calming treatments. Whatever red tape they had to hack through to plant trees in the roadbed, not just on the sidewalk, they've hacked through it in Melbourne. Have to say, though, the trees planted in the bike lane (or the bike lane painted around the trees) had me scratching my head.

Swanston Street has been partially pedestrianized, with trams, taxis and tour buses the only vehicles currently permitted during the day. According to news reports, the city was aware of the danger posed by buses on the street and planned to ban them sometime next year. Ironically, the street also has Melbourne's first Copenhagen-style protected bike lane, but the lane extends only one kilometer and ends well north of where the woman was killed.

Melbourne's reaction to the death of a cyclist on one of its streets may be instructive for New York City residents. The death was major news in The Age, one of the city's two main daily papers. The 1,200-word article quotes a city council member, a former mayor, the head of the bus line, and a representative of the transportation department. About 200 Melbourne cyclists rallied near the corner where the crash occurred. Even more remarkable, the next day The Age reported that "stung by criticism he failed to protect cyclists from the thousands of tour buses that choke one of the city's main thoroughfares, an emotional Lord Mayor John So last night banned buses from Swanston Street."

Contrast this with the remarks of our own mayor after two cyclists were struck and killed by vehicles in separate incidents on the Hudson River bike path, a car-free space. As reported by Streetsblog, Bloomberg expressed his sympathy, but said bikers also have to watch out for themselves in interactions with cars. "Even if they're in the right, they are the lightweights," the mayor said of cyclists. "Every year, too many people are hit by cars - and bikes have to pay attention."

Photo of crash scene on Swanston Street: The Age

In August, I had the pleasure of spending a little more than two weeks in Melbourne, Australia. Melbourne is the country's second-largest city, with 3.8 million residents in the metropolitan area. Despite its size, from a walking and transportation standpoint (to say nothing of a coffee-drinking perspective), Melbourne almost defines the term "livable city."

Trams

Melbourne boasts the world's most extensive tram network, with 152 miles of track, 28 routes and more than 1,800 tram stops. A total of 156.4 million passenger trips were recorded on Melbourne’s trams in 2007.  Melbournians love their tram system, which was begun in 1885, and they fiercely fought efforts to cut the system about 30 years ago. Since then, service has been upgraded and lines added or extended. Trams are so much the norm that drivers making rights at major intersections are required to execute the Melbourne "hook turn" so as not to block oncoming trams.

Cycling

The City of Melbourne is serious about improving cycling conditions and has been working hard to add bike lanes and other infrastructure, including a new "Copenhagen-style" protected bike lane on a one-kilometer stretch in the CBD (not pictured here). "The city aims to be one of the best cycling cities in the world," according to its impressive annual report on cycling conditions [download it].

The city's efforts have been paying off in increased bike commuting. Cyclists accounted for almost eight percent of all morning peak vehicles on the road in 2007, up from four percent in 2006. Today, there are about 12,000 cycle trips into and out of Melbourne's CBD each weekday, according to the advocacy group Bicycle Victoria.

Bicycle Victoria has 40,000 members, covering the entire state of Victoria, of which Melbourne is the capital. Cycling crash insurance is included in the Aus$95 (US$77) cost of membership.

I was impressed by how well equipped the local cyclists are. This is in part because helmets and lights are mandatory. But a large percentage of cyclists were also outfitted with accessories like day-glo rain jackets and panniers. Both cyclists and pedestrians generally obey traffic signals, although tram tracks are an ever-present hazard for riders. I saw one woman snare her front wheel in a track and fall, and I witnessed other cyclists blithely crossing tracks at angles I considered perilous.

Still, cycling is eminently safe compared to New York City. Melbourne reports that in 2006 there were just 146 crashes resulting in injury. Nevertheless, Melbourne considers this figure too high and is trying to whittle the numbers down further. Among the city's upcoming projects is a Web site for cyclists to report issues and hazards.

Lovely off-road bike paths wind through sections of the city.  I followed one along the Yarra River for many miles, and it was often hard to believe I was still in Melbourne.  On trips out of town, I was amazed to see that outside of urban areas bicyclists are permitted to ride on the shoulders of freeways, with signage advising them how to safely traverse on-ramps.

Laneways and other pedestrian amenities

Melbourne is filled with hidden "laneways" that cut between major streets downtown. The city has been steadily reclaiming these hidden treasures from traffic and disuse, and the laneways have become renowned for their charm, with al fresco eateries, boutique shops and bars. A number of inviting pedestrian arcades, reminiscent of those in Paris, can be found as well.

Sidewalk build-outs for traffic calming are plentiful around town and are put to varied uses, including café seating and bike parking.  

As he has been doing in New York City, Danish architect Jan Gehl has been working with the City of Melbourne to improve the quality of its public realm.

All in all, Melbourne is a wonderful place to explore on foot, by tram or by bike -- after you spend half an eternity getting there!

Photos: Ken Coughlin

Streetfilms' Clarence Eckerson recently made the journey to Melbourne, Australia, where he found a "new world city" redesigned for people-oriented development and mobility. Writes Clarence:

Melbourne is simply wonderful. You can get lost in the nooks and crannies that permeate the city. As you walk you feel like free-flowing air with no impediments to your enjoyment. For a city with nearly 4 million people, the streets feel much like the hustle and bustle of New York City but without omnipresent danger and stress cars cause.

There is an invaluable lesson here. In the early 90s, Melbourne was hardly a haven for pedestrian life until Jan Gehl was invited there to undertake a study and publish recommendations on street improvements and public space. Ten years after the survey’s findings, Melbourne was a remarkably different place thanks to sidewalk widenings, copious tree plantings, a burgeoning cafe culture, and various types of car restrictions on some streets. Public space and art abound. And all of this is an economic boom for business.

In the film we hear from some of the prime movers in the Melbourne livable streets universe, who explain what has come about during a decade dedicated to improving the public realm. 

Clarence Eckerson files this report (and StreetFilm) from Melbourne, Australia:

This city really is wonderful. Art, happiness, liveliness, and good walking everywhere (between daily runs and walking I am averaging about 10 miles per day). The incredible thing is the TRAFFIC CALMING. Unless you are on a real highway no matter where you go there is inventive and unique traffic calming. If you are on a main road, ANYWHERE you turn off you hit textured crosswalks, gateways, speed bumps, just really the way it should be. Check out the video, featuring Kevin Luten from UrbanTrans, to get an idea.

We put on a Streetfilms night (hastily arranged) and we got about 35 people from the govt. and groups to show up. I got emails from people apologizing that they couldn't come! And one guy was the biggest fan saying his favorites are Sasquatch and our clay animations. Due to popular demand, I am giving another showing on Tuesday with a smaller group.

Today in 100+ degree heat I am going for a bike ride with a whole gaggle of bike people and advocates. Should be fun if I don't die! 

Australians bought more bikes than cars last year by a record 40 percent margin, according to a report released this week by the Cycling Promotion Fund. It was the eighth straight year bike sales topped auto sales, bolstering appeals to re-direct government spending toward bike-ped projects, such as those developed in Melbourne since the 1990s.

More details from the Fund's report (pdf):

The nation sold a record 1.47 million bicycles in 2007, compared to 1.04 million cars, while the government is believed to spend $7.5 billion on road related expenditure compared to the $100 million spent on cycling infrastructure.

"Soaring petrol prices, concern over climate change, crippling traffic congestion and the desire to lead healthier lifestyles all contributed to the record breaking year" said Elliot Fishman, policy advisor at the Cycling Promotion Fund.

"Recently released Census figures show that many Australians have rediscovered the bicycle as a great way to commute, with cycling trips to work growing at an average 22% across Australian capital cities; with Melbourne soaring 42% between 2001 and 2006," added Fishman. The Cycling Promotion Fund, together with other national cycling organisations and over 60 councils across the country, have called on the Federal Government to adopt its Healthy and Active Transport (HEAT) proposal on the back of the figures. The HEAT programme involves a Commonwealth contribution of $50 million per annum direct to local government for walking and cycling infrastructure projects.

The Cycling Promotion Fund, in case you were wondering, is an Australian advocacy group financed by the bike industry. Could a spike in commuter bike sales here in the US spark similar industry efforts?

Photo: listsanddiagrams/Flickr

With apologies for my carbon footprint, I recently returned from a working tour of eight cities Down Under. The trip included an invitation to Melbourne to work with the staff of the city's successful new public space development, Federation Square, and to help lead a Placemaking training course that included many city staff, local developers and "place managers." In the process, I had the opportunity to learn a few things relevant to my hometown, New York City.

Melbourne's central business district is as dense and urban as any U.S. city other than New York. Like New York City, Melbourne—the fastest growing city in Australia, with a population of nearly 4 million—has a lively public life. But it hasn't always been so. A “New World” city, designed on a grid, Melbourne went as far, or further, than its U.S. counterparts in planning itself around the automobile.

In 1993, Jan Gehl, who happens to be in New York City this week to start work with Department of Transportation, ran one of his “public spaces, public life” surveys in Melbourne. During that first Melbourne study Gehl collected baseline data on how public spaces were being used and made recommendations for improvements. He worked with the city to implement some of these improvements and in 2004 Gehl's team was invited back to do a second study. They found that dramatic changes had taken place during the decade between the studies.

Street space in Melbourne's central business district has been taken away from private automobiles and reallocated to transit riders and pedestrians.

Gehl’s studies makes Melbourne one of the few cities in the world where accurate data on public life has been collected over such a period of time. Between 1993 and 2004, these were some of the changes that Gehl's team observed:

• 71% more space for people and activities on streets and squares
• 177% more café seats
• 39% increase in pedestrian activity during the day on weekdays
• 98% increase in pedestrian activity in the evenings on weekdays
• Large increases in stationary activity that came with the newly created space

A page from Gehl's report shows a grading of the degree to which ground floor uses support public life during the two study periods.

In addition to documenting the increase in sidewalk space and decrease in cars, Gehl’s studies tracked the steady improvements of ground floor retail spaces in central Melbourne. These improvements contributed significantly to the city's increasing pedestrian friendliness and the revitalization of downtown.

Reallocation of street space away from private automobiles and public investment in transit has provided direct benefits to retail businesses in central Melbourne.

Efforts to reduce the cost of traveling by transit from the suburbs to the city center combined with the rising cost of gasoline has led to a rise in transit ridership that has greatly surpassed expectations.

As in Jan Gehl's Copenhagen, Melbourne has steadily eliminated on-street parking space.Today, there is very little on-street parking and virtually zero free parking in the central business district.

In the beginning of 2006, Melbourne instituted a new parking levy on all long-stay private/commercial parking spaces in the central business district, starting at $400/space and moving to $800/space. The revenue generated from this levy, estimated at $38.5 million in fiscal year 2006-07, is being reinvested in transportation improvements including a free shuttle in the central business district.

Completed in 2002, Federation Square is Melbourne’s most prominent public realm improvement and the greatest testament to the city's commitment to fostering public life. Built over a rail yard, Federation Square is the city’s living room, cultural center and nighttime destination. It took a huge public investment of around AU$473 million (just under US$400 Million) to do the project. For comparison, Chicago’s Millennium Park, which is a similar size new public space and also built over rail yards, was built for $475 million around the same time. Despite initial community resistance, the Square has been embraced by the city and is generating significant returns on many fronts.

My work with Federation Square included facilitating a public space audit to help them look at how to continue to improve and manage the space, engage new partners and audiences, and create a broader sense of public ownership and participation. In many of the newly reclaimed areas in Melbourne these same issues were very relevant.

Bourke Street Mall was transformed into a pedestrian street in the late 70s and then reconfigured recently as a transit mall. It is also one of the Melbourne's defining public space destinations. However, participants in my Placemaking training course gave the new streetscape poor marks. Just as the street was once dominated by automobiles, many now feel that the new transit-oriented design is still oriented too much around transportation and not enough around shopping, cultural creativity and social life.

In the middle of one of the busiest sidewalks in Melbourne, people take time to stop and play chess, watch chess or just watch people.

As the title of Gehl’s report suggests, it is the "places for people" that are making Melbourne work and are bringing about its dramatic shift. It is these destinations that, despite greater difficulty in accessing via the private automobile, are bringing people downtown, getting them to stay longer and driving further investment.

At first glance, one might assume that the successful revitalization of Melbourne's downtown was the result of the city's efforts to drive automobiles out of the central business district. But traffic reduction was only one piece of the puzzle. Melbourne's renaissance was accomplished by focusing on the improvement, democratization and vitality of the city's public spaces.

Jan Gehl, the famed Danish urbanist, is in New York City this week where, sources say, he has been hired as a consultant for Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC program.

At a presentation to the board of the Regional Plan Association on Wednesday at the offices of PriceWaterhouseCoopers at 41st and Madison, Gehl said the city must tame the automobile if it is going to become a truly great city for pedestrians and for public life.

Asked during questions what he would do specifically for the city, Gehl said he would make pedestrians more comfortable in the city by adding street furniture, widening sidewalks and creating "oasises" for them. In addition, he would put immediate emphasis on better conditions for cyclists. And finally, he said attention should be paid to the mass transit system. Good mass transit and good pedestrian environments, he said, "are brothers and sisters," each depending on the other.

In his lecture and slide show, Gehl talked of how in Copenhagen they had added bike lanes and additional sidewalk space by converting most four-lane streets to two lanes. Looking back over the last few decades, Gehl showed how big urban cities like Barcelona, Melbourne, Copenhagen and others are "reclaiming" their public spaces and streets for pedestrians by putting less emphasis on accommodating cars. He mentioned how in 1962, all of Copenhagen's principal squares, 18 of them, were being used for parking lots. Now all are used for public life. Gehl said that he sees enormous potential for similar improvements in New York City.

The Dept. of Transportation's press office declined to comment on Gehl's work at this time. In an interview with Streetsblog in June, DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said she was "hoping to bring Gehl over at the end of next month to help us work on a pedestrian and public space strategy much like what he did for London."

Photo: Aaron Naparstek