Nicholas Fogarty on active transport policy, investing in the health of future generations, and the personal benefits of cycling.
The Australian Walking and Cycling Conference has been running for over ten years and brings together experts and academics from a range of disciplines including population health, urban planning and public policy.
The 2019 conference was held on the 24th and 25th of October in Port Adelaide. Tess Lea and Nicholas Fogarty presented their research into policy cultures, traffic congestion and community solutions for active transport in the City of Sydney. On the sidelines of the conference, Fogarty contributed to a series of podcasts produced by the conference entitled Step Away from the Car.
Fogarty discussed the Pedalling for Change project, along with his work with community members and policymakers exploring possible solutions to congestion that involve investment in cycling infrastructure and the strategic encouragement of active transport. The insightful podcast is entitled “Out of the Gridlock”.
“We’re actually doing work with the City of Sydney. A lot of their thinking is about if we can develop our infrastructure networks for cycling around schools, and we can first develop pathways for families to safely get to schools, that can actually become the basis for an entire city network,” Fogarty told the podcast.
“It is quite startling, when we think about the potential impacts of raising a generation that’s very active as a part of their transport on a daily basis. If we were to look at it in terms of an investment, in per dollar value. On these infrastructure projects, when you think about making it easy for people to be active as a part of their every-day, then expanding out across a lifetime and then across a population, the amount of relief on our health system is massive”.
The full podcast is available on the Australian Walking and Cycling Conference website:
Out of the Gridlock
Pedalling for Change 