Transport Planning In Brisbane City: Importance Of Bicycle Helmet Policy

Document framework

Discuss about the Transport Planning in the Brisbane City.

Transport planning is a very important part of a country or city’s civilization. This depicts how organized a city is. There are many problems that arise in context of the proper transport planning in the city. A proper transport planning by the city administration helps the city to be kept clean, free of accidents and a smooth communication of vehicles on the roads. Thus, it is indeed important to maintain the roads and the increasing vehicles to be in a smooth communication process, avoiding traffic jams and accidents. In this paper, the topic of discussion is to show how the policy in bicycle helmets and assure that bicycles do not become victims of accidents (Vigar, 2013).

Need for bicycle helmet policy

One must know about the proper criteria or the importance of introducing the bicycle helmet policy in practice. There was a report in the year 1986 that was published to highlight on the child cyclist injuries (Wegman, Zhang & Dijkstra, 2012). This report was published from the Redcliffe Hospital in Brisbane. The increasing rate of the child injuries due to not wearing the helmets while riding the bicycles showed that the children were not secured without wearing the helmets. This had been one of the major concerns for the government. This raised the concern for the government as they wanted to bring out a remedy for this problem. They feared that this could happen to the other people as well (Wegman, Zhang & Dijkstra, 2012). 

Effects of the injuries while riding bicycles

The doctors of the various medical organizations and hospitals, the people having the responsibility for the road safety of the citizens all expressed their gravest concerns about this matter (Siman-Tov et al., 2012). They have expressed their views that this should be made compulsory by the government as the lives of many people are associated with it. They say that wearing helmets while riding bicycles is a good practice because it protects the cyclists from the head and brain injuries. The head injuries that are caused by the accident resulting from cycling accidents affect the people from different perspectives like long-term metal and physical disability (Olivier, Walter & Grzebieta, 2013).  

A proper and safe transport planning can help to diminish the rate of accidents in a huge way by adjusting the vehicles to take the assigned roads and the cyclists should keep to their specified lanes (Tolley, & Turton, 2014).  The traffic and road safety bodies of the organizations have to chalk out certain rules for each kind of the vehicles in the country provided in the major road system in the country.

Brisbane City Cyclist planning

Policies for safety of the bicyclists

The Bicycle Brisbane Plan has to be followed in terms of the road safety for the bicyclists (Heesch et al., 2016). This policy is made for the benefit of the bicyclists and the use of helmets has to be made mandatory so that many lives can be saved. In the minor road systems within the city, the cyclists have to share the same roadway with the other vehicles. The bicyclists have to follow the lines marked specially bicycles or wide curbside lanes. The cyclists on the main roads are mainly the school children or the people who cycle their way for recreation. They should not use the verges or open spaces (Garrard, Rissel & Bauman, 2012).  

The Brisbane city administration is looking to provide opportunities to most of the cyclists a better environment to ride cycles in the city premises and they have thought of making new plans and provide resources for it as well (Buehler, & Pucher, 2012).  The local, state and federal government is looking forward to improve the cycling networks all over the country. The technical areas in the cycling network have to be improved in this context as well.

Targets and Plans

Brisbane Vision

According to the Brisbane Vision, it looks after the well-structured future of the Brisbane City ("Brisbane City Plan 2014 | Brisbane City Council", 2017). They have set their targets of completing almost 1700 km of the bikeways networks by the end of 2031 (Council, 2014).

Brisbane City Plan 2014

The city council of Brisbane has looked to implement certain plans they have made. They want to develop the city land areas and utilize it for the bikeways ("Brisbane City Plan 2014 | Brisbane City Council", 2017). The city plan has included two interactive online planning tools, namely ePlan (the digital version of city plan) and interactive mapping process (Council, 2014).

Brisbane Transport plan (2008-2026)

This transport plan introduces the transport options and the outline information that help to understand the transport problems in the city. They have made realistic transport mode share targets where the cycling will account up to 8% of the all the trips on an average week day in the year 2026 (Kamruzzaman et al., 2016).

Cycling network maps

In the ePlan made in the Brisbane city plan, the existing and proposed future cycling network Bicycle Overlay Map can be found. The current map can be found in the Google Maps, Nearmap and Cycling Brisbane’s route planner (Fuad, & Drieberg, 2013).

The National policy for cycling in Australia

The national strategy in Australia for the cycling has been improved as a coordinating framework that has identified the responsibilities that are relevant with the policies of Australian government (Gardner, 2017). The various levels of the government, the community, industry stakeholders have all helped to promote the value of cycling in Australia (Gardner, 2017).

Technical standards and city council standard drawings

The city council in Brisbane has provided drawings for the off-road and on-road cycling facilities in the country.

The Cycling Aspcts of Austroads Guides (2014) have all the information that relate to the planning, design and traffic management of cycling management in the city. The policy and legal framework The Guide to Road Design-Part 6A: Pedestrian and Cycling Paths provide necessary guidance for the road designers to build safe road designs that will help to efficient walking and cycling in the city roads (Gardner, 2017). The organizations that are involved in the cycling management, support and encourage the cycling habits among people, obviously wearing helmets are Australian Bicycle Council, Bicycle Queensland, Cycling Australia, Cycling Queensland, Cycling Resource Centre, Cycling Promotion Fund and many others (Gardner, 2017). 

The strategy for the Australian cycling planning and policy is built upon the coordinating framework that helps to realize the responsibilities of government at all levels (Gardner, 2017). This strategy highlights the fact that the number of bicycle riding people has to be increased and this will reflect in the betterment of individual safety and society. The policy wants to double the number of the bicycle users by 2016 (Gardner, 2017). The Australian Bicycle Council has encouraged that a biennial National Cycling Participation Survey has to be organized in order to measure the number of total cyclists in the country. The council wants to ensure some of the facts that are associated in this (Gardner, 2017).

• They want to promote cycling as a viable and safe mode for transport.
• This can enable the safety of the people.
• This can develop consistence guidance for the stakeholders.
• The importance for cycling in the transport system and land use planning activities has been addressed.

South East Queensland Regional Plan

SEQ 2017 provides the framework for the growth management of the country. Some important things are highlighted in this context ("South East Queensland Regional Plan", 2017). It aims for the overall growth of the region, protecting the environment, enhancing the regional economic strengths so that they can put up competition on a global basis, making the lands productive, protecting the resources, landscapes and the cultural heritage (Warren, & Gibson, 2014).  They also have the target to utilize on the current infrastructure and make smarter solutions for the new infrastructure; they also aim to support the rural communities and the economic diversification (Thompson, & Maginn, 2012).  The implementation of the EPBC Act will be a key thing to be noted when all the urban projects will be addressed. In this case, the need to protect the lives of human beings is an essential thing. If the children and other people die just because of not wearing the helmets while riding bicycles, it will be a huge loss for the country’s man power ("South East Queensland Regional Plan", 2017).

South East Queensland Regional Plan

SEQ Policies till 2031

South East Queensland 2031 regional transport plan is an essential plan for identifying the bicycle helmet policies for the region that has been focused in this report. The plan suggests to increase the share of active transport such as walking and cycling up to two times like 10% to 20%. This will increase the number cycles in the city. They also want to cut down the share of motor vehicles from 83% to 66% that will help to rescue the society from damage. Some challenges that have been identified in this prospect are they can no longer rely on the motor vehicles for the traffic growth. They want to promote walking and cycling as massive important for the road safety and better planning. The population is increasing in this city very rapidly so the need to rely on developing new means The Connecting SEQ 2031has identified several new centers for the public transport hubs. They want to build some strategies regarding to transport that will reduce pollution and waste in the countries. Those means should be cost effective enough so that they can be easily maintained and operated. The limit of consumption should be reduced to sustainable effects.

The Queensland Infrastructure Plan has an allocation of $500 million for developing the cycling infrastructure within the town. They want to support the local cycling networks and encourage the active transport. The planning suggests that a rise of 58% in the cycling of the area should be optimized. This will also cater to reduce the congestion levels within the city. More cycling in the city will encourage more transport efficiency. The school going kids can be benefitted from the fact of increasing cycling infrastructures and the use of helmets while cycling will add to their safety while cycling in the highways.

Many strategies can be optimized at the time of looking at the issue and they should be looking forward to implement them realistically. The government needs to make different kinds of surveys like the vehicle flow surveys, vehicle weight surveys, journey speed, travel time and delay surveys, spot speed surveys, environmental impact surveys, parking use surveys and many more (Ahillen, Mateo-Babiano & Corcoran, 2016).  Through making these surveys, they will be able to know which roads are mainly used by the bigger and heavier vehicles and which roads are used by the smaller and lighter vehicles. The government of Queensland has revealed in their annual reports that they want to motivate the youth to be indulged in cycling. Queensland Cycling Strategy has been built because of that only. They want to make a safe environment for cycling and make sure that everyone is convenient in riding cycles in the state. They also want to encourage the new riders to cycling and thus make the community believe that cycling is indeed helpful for the benefit of health. The economy of the state and the country will be energized as well. The government is much interested to grow the participation of the young people in this so that the cost of motor vehicles can be easily saved and the environment will be saved as well. They will encourage more people to ride cycles by sharing the roads and public places. The population is growing everyday so the people want to avail an enjoyable, comfortable and safe environment for the riders.

Approach to the policy formulation

There are many kinds of problems that are associated with the traffic control system. These approaches can be solved in different manners. The approaches can be noted as the objective-led approach and the problem-oriented approach. Cycling is a way to reduce all of these problems (Belin, Tillgren & Vedung, 2012).  It emits excessive pollution, building new roads and increase the number of lanes in the highways for the advantage of the smaller vehicles, the use of telecommunications, get rid of the manual signaling systems and deploy new electronic signals at the roads will be some effective ideas to meet the needs of the objectives taken. Though, these solutions are very expensive, they may not prove to be effective enough on the long run because if new roads are built, it may take up new lands (Belin, Tillgren & Vedung, 2012).

Conclusion

This paper can be concluded by saying that transport planning is indeed an essential aspect of the town planning in Brisbane. The various objectives of the city council has aimed to build a transport policy that will cater to the needs of the city’s transport. The chosen policy of bicycle helmet using is also an essential thing since many people die of falling from the bicycles on the highways and get trampled by the bigger vehicles.

References

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