Plan to create safer routes to school for kids

Cycling legend Sarah Ulmer in winning form at the 2006 Women's World Cup Cycling Series in Wellington. Her latest venture is to make the streets of Cambridge safer and more vibrant for children.

An ambitious plan to make streets in Cambridge more vibrant, attractive and safe for children to walk, bike and scooter to school has been revealed.

It comes after more than 250 residents and business owners identified issues on Cambridge streets which they felt made it unsafe or tricky for kids to get to school by bike or on foot as part of a Streets for People survey run in November.

The plan, which includes trialling new pedestrian crossings, planter boxes, painted dots on the road and a pop-up dual cycleway, has now been developed to address these issues by making temporary changes to several streets and testing their effectiveness.

Community spokeswoman and member of the Streets for People project team Sarah Ulmer said it was an exciting project grounded in feedback from the community.

"The whole idea of the Streets for People project is to use this feedback to trial some rapid, low cost and temporary changes to certain streets so we can see what works and what doesn't in making our streets safer and easier for kids – and all of us – to use.

"The streets we have selected link four Cambridge schools and will allow us to create a route for kids to use to get safely to school, and home again, each day."

Ulmer said the project had come about as a result of the 2017 Safe Ways to School survey carried out by Cambridge-based business CCASM.

"In this survey, 73 per cent of parents who participated said they wanted their children to be able to ride, walk or scoot to school if their routes were safe which shows how important it is we make some changes to our streets."

Mum of two Kelly Collins said it was important for children to be able to use active modes of transport to get to school.

"When we get out of cars and on to bikes and scooters and our feet, we connect, not just with the places we are going to, but to the places and people in between.

"It's important to me that our kids bike to school because it's a healthy choice, our physical and mental health benefit as well as the health of our planet, simple really!"

Waipā District Council service delivery group manager Dawn Inglis said the project had been a collaborative effort between council and the Cambridge community.

"This plan has been developed in partnership with each of the four schools and based on the feedback we have received from residents and business owners living and operating on the chosen route.

"Once it is in place, we expect this to be quite an iterative process with changes and improvements being made along the way depending on feedback from the community."

Dawn said implementation would start in February 2021 and run until June 2021 after which any successful changes would be left in place and any unsuccessful ones removed.

"Once the changes have been installed, we will have a three-week settling in period to give people the opportunity to test it out and then we'll be seeking feedback for three months until June 2021."

Dawn said a report would then be provided to council outlining the results of project and feedback from the community.

"This will hopefully give council the confidence to then implement some of these changes permanently in Cambridge and look to test them in other parts of the district."

The Streets for People project is being funded by Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency as part of a nationwide movement to use tactical urbanism to get more New Zealanders on their bikes or out walking.

More information on the project can be found at www.streetsforpeople.nz.