The key objectives of this research were to identify the contribution that urban public transport (PT) can make to the Safe System approach, and to develop an implementation plan for the insertion of PT as a safe mode into the Safer Journeys framework and action plans. In order to achieve these goals, the project: • completed a comprehensive review of existing international and New Zealand literature and practice, identifying best practice examples of Safe System approaches with an emphasis placed on PT systems • in the light of knowledge from the review and information from transportation studies, drew conclusions regarding the potential contribution of a modal shift to PT with present urban form, and how this contribution could be enhanced with the use of urban densification • used the insights drawn to devise a method of integrating PT issues fully into the Safe System approach to road safety, and to make recommendations as to how this might also be integrated into Safer Journeys. The review is carried out from a Safe System perspective. It is thus assumed that a Safe System approach is appropriate for all urban transport modes including ferry and rail, whether or not this Safe System approach is pursued within the umbrella of New Zealand’s Safer Journeys road safety strategy or by some other mechanism. PT is generally considered a safe form of transport. For example, in New Zealand, passengers in cars and vans are seven times more likely than bus passengers to be killed or injured in a crash (for the same time spent travelling), indicating that bus travel is comparatively a very safe mode of travel for passengers. Note that this does not include falls inside of buses or injuries sustained entering or exiting buses. Bus drivers are very seldom killed, with no deaths in 2012, but six drivers were seriously injured and 43 sustained minor injuries in that year. The literature and case studies from the Auckland and Wellington main urban areas indicate that PT is indeed safer than motorised personal transport modes. However, when injuries to PT users accessing PT, exiting from PT, on PT, and journeying to and from PT, are taken into account, the difference narrows. These injuries relate to walking and cycling infrastructure, including lighting, PT interchange and bus stop design, PT vehicle design (and internal infrastructure) and the driving behaviour of PT drivers. Journeys to and from PT vehicles may use vulnerable modes. It is important for walking and cycling safety to be a high priority to encourage people to use these modes and access the health benefits they afford. Also, fewer injuries will occur if there is good urban planning to provide efficient transport and reduce unnecessary journeys. The review looked at the Safe System approach to road safety (sometimes called Vision Zero or sustainable safety) as it has been adopted by New Zealand, the governments of other developed countries, and international organisations with an interest in road safety. It also looks at how its relationship to PT is viewed. In New Zealand, PT strategies and Safer Journeys are both over-arched by the Government Policy Statement on Land Transport (GPS). Safer Journeys impacts on PT only through measures to reduce level crossing crashes and crashes where buses or trams hit other vehicles or pedestrians. Safer Journeys does not actively try to improve safety by increasing PT’s modal share on the basis that it is safer. Instead it leaves PT funding, which is a major determinant of PT usage, to be determined by other urban transport considerations articulated by the government in the GPS. A literature search and a survey of overseas government agencies revealed that a similar approach had been adopted overseas. Road safety strategies sometimes contained aspirational statements relating to increasing the share of urban trips carried by PT but this was not accompanied by actions. Where the reasons for this were articulated they related to the historical reality that PT strategies and policies had always been decided by considerations outside of road safety. Thus the best strategy for road safety was to accept this and maximise the safety of the networks as they had been built to accommodate such systems. This would mean including in Safer Journeys PT-related injury not at present covered in Safer Journeys actions. This approach was then accepted as appropriate for the New Zealand context and the means of inclusion of PT within Safer Journeys was considered. In New Zealand, this step, in the case of on-road vehicles like buses and trams, is already able to be fitted within the existing Safer Journeys framework for motor vehicle crashes, but not for PT injuries not related to collisions with other vehicles or pedestrians. New areas of interest and actions (which would of course need funding) are all that is required to make it happen in New Zealand. Such actions would incur the costs of gathering the crash information necessary to evolve countermeasures and the cost of the countermeasures themselves. To cover PT fully (by including urban commuter rail and ferries), Safer Journeys needs to move from urban road safety to urban transport safety1. This would require no structural change, just a restatement of the reach of the strategy and the inclusion of some new areas of interest and action plans. To achieve this: • The whole journey rather than just the road phase needs consideration. • Data should be gathered and analysed on injury related to all aspects of the journey. • Safety expertise can be positioned in organisational structures to influence how PT is operated. The experience of New South Wales is a pointer to what can be achieved. • Tools to better monitor PT safety can be made available and used (an example is the progress made by Sweden in counting pedestrian-only crashes and injuries to PT passengers). All the above could relate to Safer Journeys priorities accompanied by Safer Journeys action plans without changing the framework. In New Zealand, improvement would involve taking actions within the present Safer Journeys system to better ensure the safety of PT-related travel. These actions could include better recognition of non-motor vehicle pedestrian injuries and injuries entering/exiting PT in the present system. Safer Journeys currently addresses injury that occurs on the road network and about which we have accessible data. There is some information on cycling where no motor vehicle is involved. However, the following injuries in relation to buses and trams are recorded in separate databases that do not feed into Safer Journeys: • injuries on/within the vehicle • injuries boarding/alighting the vehicle • injuries walking to/from the vehicle (unless a motor vehicle is involved). In order to include these injuries in Safer Journeys in such a way that Safe System countermeasures may be worked out, it is necessary to set up systems that better capture their incidence and characteristics so that their epidemiology can be better known and countermeasures evolved. At present pedestrian infrastructure receives no Transport Agency subsidy unless it is part of a joint pedestrian/cycle facility. This means the money to build and maintain it comes from scarce rate-payer funds. This may have detrimental impacts on walking routes to and from PT. There is also an understandable aspiration to make popular walking surfaces visually pleasing. Visually pleasing surfaces can be safe and of high walkability but they have to be carefully designed, implemented and maintained if they are to play a full part in a Safe System, and may require higher levels of maintenance than some simpler surfaces. This will become even more important as the population ages, as older people are more fragile and thus more vulnerable to injury than younger people. Also road work practices as they apply to pedestrians require examination, as footpath closures may not always be accompanied by adequately safe alternative routes. Similar requirements would apply to the safety of bus/train/ferry stops, access to stops and any safety issues involved in getting on and off vehicles. Other important areas are the interior design of PT vehicles and the training of drivers to minimise on-vehicle injury, the design of PT interchanges, vehicle design and operation, and driver management. On the planning front, safety input to the design of PT projects is important. This would reflect Safe System principles like: • maximal separation of conflicting modes, particularly potentially aggressive modes and vulnerable modes, and widespread use of separate travel paths • moving towards self-explaining ‘no surprises’ routes for all modes • regular Safe System audits of PT systems, including all aspects of the PT journey. The actions advocated above will not overtly and visibly increase PT patronage. However, these types of action can also be expected to have a knock-on effect, whereby the resulting safer environment for PT users on all parts of their journey would encourage further use. The Safer Journeys strategy was produced and the action plans are overseen by the National Road Safety Committee (NRSC). The members of the NRSC are the main public sector stakeholders with an interest in road safety in New Zealand, including the Ministry of Transport, the NZ Transport Agency, the Accident Compensation Corporation and the NZ Police. Any changes to be made to the strategy and action plans would need to be agreed by the NRSC. An area such as PT would therefore have to be considered by the NRSC in conjunction with the other road safety areas set out in Safer Journeys, and included and prioritised accordingly. The timing and extent of any changes to the priorities and action plans in the strategy would need to be discussed. If commuter rail was to be included a decision would need to be made as to whether commuter rail operators should be represented on the committee when rail-related topics were up for discussion, or whether the input of the Transport Agency’s Director of Rail Safety would be sufficient. The recommendations arising from this work are that: • The uptake and provision of urban PT is encouraged by the government in parallel with road safety under the overarching GPS. • The NRSC consider the incorporation of urban PT safety into the Safer Journeys strategy accompanied by an appropriate name change for the NRSC to better reflect its wider scope. • This includes consideration of Safer Journeys actions in these areas: — The acquisition of data to allow analysis of the safety of the whole journey, including segments to and from the PT vehicle, the journey on the PT vehicle, entering and leaving the vehicle, and the implications after this for a pedestrian or cyclist. This would include the feasibility of such acquisition, the utility of the available data, and the costs of such acquisition related to the benefits. Most of this data would be from sources outside of Police reported crashes and would thus be outside the scope of the NZ Transport Agency’s Crash Analysis System — Analysis of the above data to provide safety benchmarks and information related to the development of Safe System countermeasures — Carrying out work to develop Safe System actions in the form of countermeasures to ameliorate any safety problems the analyses may uncover — Assess the priority of such actions relative to existing actions. • The NRSC consider whether the Safer Journeys strategy should include the management systems of nonroad PT providers as it does at present for on-road PT. • The NRSC consider carrying out work to elucidate the impact on road safety funding allocation of including the above additional areas into Safer Journeys actions. (Author/publisher)
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