More TALES from Dunedin

Day two, third plenary session of The Active Living and the Environment Symposium

Andrew Jackson began the morning, telling us that people in New Zealand now walk only 9 minutes per day, on average, as car use has increased massively over time. Modelling had shown that public transport on demand (where the bus comes to you and drops you at your destination) would lead to a slight increase in deaths because of reduced physical activity.

Walking or cycling to and/or from public transport stops contributes to physical activity levels, which is why some people include public transport as ‘active travel’. It can even fulfil the weekly target levels of moderate physical activity on its own.

Modelling an increase in active travel would lead to a net 1,300 deaths prevented, because of the benefits of physical activity on non-communicable diseases (even allowing for deaths due to road travel injuries). In the model, use of autonomous vehicles would lead to an additional 600 deaths because of the loss of active travel. The results also depend on whether population growth forecasts are correct: if population growth is high not medium (as now seems likely), carbon and air pollutant emissions and other adverse consequences from motor vehicle use will be worse, sooner. Radical change is thus needed to reduce carbon emissions. In Kuala Lumpur, artificial intelligence (AI) is being used to control traffic lights. Andrew painted a (to me) dystopian picture of our travel decisions being controlled by AI.

Claire Pascoe, from the New Zealand Transport Agency, introduced me to the concept of adaptive challenges vs technical problems and to the 2002 survival guide for leaders by Heifetz and Linsky. We are all familiar with technical challenges; the problems come (or don’t go away) when we try to deal with adaptive challenges as if they were technical problems. Adaptive challenges have a gap between aspiration (or people’s perceptions) and reality; involve stakeholders who cross boundaries; and have long timeframes (no ‘quick fixes’). The differences are summarised in this table.

Relating this to the TALES theme, Claire proposed slowing motor traffic and making car drivers feel that they are the guests on the road. We need to frame the issue differently, changing the language to change people’s attitudes (as was done for tobacco control – see summary by Simon Chapman and Melanie Wakefield, and Simon Chapman and Deborah Lupton’s book on media advocacy.

Claire pointed out how important it is for people to understand the losses from a car-based society. Her wonderful slide (reproduced below) made the very impactful point that storing private property on public roads is considered really weird – except for cars!  Her third point related to ‘how ripe is the issue?’, i.e. has it become unacceptable? Referring to ‘For the love of cities’ by Peter Kageyama, she talked about the importance of love in the TALES context: if we have a strong emotional attachment to something, we look after it and are willing to suffer some pain to preserve it. In summary, cities should be dog-friendly, walkable, and cycleable.

The final speaker in the session was Simon Kingham, in his role as Chief Scientific Adviser to the New Zealand Ministry of Transport. He alerted us to his lay summaries of research ‘Simon says’. I was flattered to see that in Issue 7 of the Ministry of Transport Intelligence Digest, he recommended a recent article by a public health trainee and me.

It was heartening to hear that New Zealand Transport Agency is committed to ‘a transport system that promotes wellbeing and liveability’. Engagement is the key to success. Stakeholders need to be included at the stage of project development plus ongoing involvement during the project – and it needs to be genuine engagement (on both, or all, sides). Finally, when writing up any research, policy implications need to be stated clearly.