New Zealand has become the first country to fund pop-up bike lanes during the coronavirus pandemic
“Walking and cycling are always great ways to move more people around towns and cities because it is cheap, it takes less space on the roads and needs less parking,” Genter told me by email, “plus it provides moderate exercise, it’s quiet and doesn’t pollute the air or climate.”... [+]American-born Genter is a Green MP and came into politics from a previous career as a transportation planner.
Cities are being invited to bid for cash from New Zealand’s Innovating Streets for People fund; a cap on the budget for this fund has been lifted to enable monies to flow from the New Zealand Transport Agency to cities interested in reshaping their transport priorities. “I [have] worked on a broad range of projects,” she tells me, “including a new approach to parking and land use policy, economic evaluation of projects, transport modeling, public transport, and network design.”four COVID-specific alert levels
“To me,” she adds, “[tactical urbanism is] about moving away from an approach in transport engineering that has often been very theoretical, and relied on models or inappropriate standards, to a more agile and empirical approach. We can trial things in a low-cost way and make that part of the consultation, so people and businesses can experience what it is like, and make that experience and real-life data gathering part of the consultation to better inform decision making.
There are also clear health benefits: “30 minutes a day of moderate activity takes the pressure off our health system, and means busy commuters don’t have to find extra time in their day to exercise,” she says. “New Zealand is the first national government to show strategic and proactive leadership on how cities can rethink streets as space for safe and healthy physical distancing,” he told me via email.worked with Genter when he was a transportation advisor to the city of Auckland and says, “she understands the strategic power of moves like this.”
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