Transport and land-use planning requires consideration of a broad range of factors to deliver community outcomes. Transport and land-use planning authorities influence the way the road transport system functions and the level of safety enjoyed by road users. Funding constraints and a strong desire to produce good results across outcome areas mean trade-offs are often required. In some circumstances, planning proposals may not be assessed by road safety professionals due to their small size and perceived lack of effect on the surrounding area. Road transport planners may not be conscious of Safe System principles when developing road network plans because: • traffic impact assessments (TIAs) address flow impacts, parking and access issues • current road safety auditing techniques are not based on Safe System principles — existing design standards and practices are not yet Safe System-ready. Planning and design sets the foundation of the road network. Therefore, planners and designers have a responsibility to consistently embed road safety best practice into land-use planning. Addressing the challenge of reducing the trauma arising from road crashes requires a coordinated multidisciplinary and cross-agency approach. Road agencies around the world are adopting a Safe System approach to deliver road safety outcomes. Both the Australian (Australian Transport Council 2011) and New Zealand (Ministry of Transport 2010) National Road Safety Strategies (NRSS) are built on a Safe System approach. The Safe System is a targeted approach that ultimately aims to eliminate fatal and serious injury on the road. It recognises that road users inevitably make errors in judgment that may lead to a crash and that there are limits to the force that the human body can withstand (without causing death or serious injury) in a crash. These limitations are directly linked to the type of crash and the speed of the impact. The Safe System approach aims to support a transport system that is better able to accommodate human error and road user vulnerability. This can be achieved through better management of crash energy, so that individual road users are not exposed to crash forces likely to result in death or serious injury. The Safe System approach recognises planners, policy makers, engineers, educators, enforcers and utility providers as ‘system designers’ of our spaces. We all share responsibility for creating a more forgiving road system. This project reviews and strengthens techniques for integrating Safe System principles at an early stage of land-use planning by: • providing guidance to planning professionals on how to incorporate Safe System principles into their planning processes to achieve a safer road environment for all road users • providing guidance to planning professionals who undertake planning proposal assessments, to ensure proposals consider Safe System practices and that developments are designed with the safety of all road users in mind • encouraging developers to use this process to improve road safety for all road users, including pedestrians and cyclists, in the vicinity of their development sites. The project advisory group agreed that this project’s guidance material must be simple and able to be integrated into existing planning processes and supporting documentation (for example, when such documentation is next updated). Ultimately, guidance may need to be tailored for different types of planners. However, there is an initial need to focus on a number of fundamental issues: • Define what a Safe System means to planners (Section 2) • Identify ways to raise the priority of safety (and planning for Safe System principles) for planners (Section 3) • Identify gaps in current practices (Section 3) • Provide practical examples of how to implement Safe System principles (Section 4, Appendix A and Appendix B). Taking into account the above, the aim of this project was not to develop detailed and tested outputs that could be simply adopted for immediate implementation. The research scope necessitated a high level review and resulted in development of planning process-related outputs that could subsequently be tested and further refined as ‘fit for purpose’. The project involved undertaking the following tasks: • Preparation of a background paper and stakeholder consultation to explore the relevance of a Safe System to the planning process, identifying existing challenges with the planning process in Australia and New Zealand, and identifying benefits of incorporating Safe System considerations early in the planning process. • Consideration of land development planning practices, and in particular whether Safe System principles are being applied in the development assessment process. • Exploration of the above issues in a project advisory group workshop, as well as identifying areas of consensus, positives, challenges and knowledge gaps. • Consultation with a range of people who are planners or work with planners in state government and academia and in urban/transport planning consulting. This advised the project team on the potential benefits for planners of simple to understand ‘checklists’ to help incorporate the Safe System considerations into their daily work. • Preparation of the report which includes proposed Safe System guidance for transport and land-use planning that draws and builds on existing resources, and also provides illustrative examples. Development of the key sections to promote consideration of Safe System principles during planning phases (i.e., the Communication resource in Appendix A and Checklist resource in Appendix B) involved seeking review and feedback from a range of planning practitioners in government agencies and consulting practices to ensure the guidance is effective. The report begins in Section 2 with an outline of the Safe System, and its relevance to planners. Section 3 describes the convergence of planning and the Safe System principles; how and why the Safe System concept is important to transport and urban planning, as well as commentary on challenges and opportunities to acceptance of Safe System principles into planning. Section 4, together with Appendix A and Appendix B; provide the main output of the report delivering material guidance on how to incorporate Safe System principles. Section 5 concludes the body of the report with recommendations and caveats. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting