“It’sabout changing the focus of a street to be a street for people rather than a street for vehicles.You can reduce volumes of traffic, reduce speed of traffic, and increase the space for social interaction as well. Often streets have narrow pavements and lots of cars, but if you can tweak the form, you can createdifferent sorts of environments, whichI'llbe touching on at the Walking Summit.”
Simon says we tend to measure the success of transport based on how fast we can get to and from. He believes there is another way we can look at how to get from A to B.
“The traditional way of looking at transport isyou’realmost rewarded for the speed of the journey, but what weactually knowis that you can get multiple benefits when youactually slowthe journey down a bit.”
While walking emits no pollution and is good for your health, hesays the benefits of walking go beyondthis,creatingsafer roads,closer communities, andtight-knitneighbourhoods.
“There'san increasing body of research saying that if you can do things near where you live, so ifhaveamenities10 minutes or 15 minutes or 20minutes walkaway, youwillactually getthesebenefits.It’sall about walkability distance.”
Simon sayswhile the research is there, there still needs to be a mass shift in mindsetto get most people doing it.
“Like many societies,we'vebecome car dependent. Andthat'snot a criticism of anyone's behavior.It'sa reality that peoplehave todrive everywhere.
“The irony with walking is people go onholidayand they go walking.So,we'reactually tryingto encourage people to do something they inherently quite like.”
Hesaysonereason wedon’thave enough pedestrians is that for localjourneys, the walkways are not pleasant.
“Whatwe'retrying to do is just make something people want to do pleasant to do, to help enhance well-being andfoster inclusive streets.Thatmeans creating nice environments and slowing traffic down and trying to reduce traffic where possible, to make environmentssafe andinteresting to walk through.”
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