Yet more TALES from Dunedin

Day two of The Active Living and the Environment Symposium, continued

After a morning break for networking (and refreshments), Rebecca Brookland, of the Dept of Preventive and Social Medicine at the University of Otago in Dunedin, reported the results of her survey of older drivers in New Zealand. She pointed out that there are now more older drivers – and greater car use – than ever before but 51% of her survey participants had walked for travel, 9% had cycled and 31% had used public transport in the previous three months, despite New Zealand being such a car-dependent society.

Continuing the theme of older people, Angela Curl reported their work on outdoor falls. These are common numerically, even if they are a small proportion of all falls in New Zealand. For example, she reported that ACC data showed 11,500 falls outdoors, compared with 260,000 falls indoors. More time spent walking increases the ‘opportunity’ to fall; fear of falling reduces the time spent walking. Thus the relationship is complicated. Older people are also scared of being hit by a bicycle on shared pathways (although it is actually a rare occurrence) but are more accepting of poor environments. Work by an Engineering Doctoral student at UCL on unsegregated shared use pathways has shown that the path width and the density of occupants – both walking and cycling – are the two most important factors in determining users’ comfort.

Evidence from other countries puts falls outdoors as a significant cause of morbidity and healthcare use. In the Netherlands, hospital admission due to falls while walking for travel is five times as common as admissions of pedestrians due to collision with a vehicle, yet only the latter is included in official road travel injury statistics. In England, we found that (using conservative figures), there were at least 2.5 times as many hospital admissions for pedestrian falls as for pedestrians hit by a vehicle.

Victor Andrade spoke to us by electronic means, from Rio de Janeiro. He described their team’s involvement with a company that wanted to monitor and influence their employees’ commuting behaviours to improve environmental sustainability, employee health, and social justice. Long Chen described the various geographical information science (GIS) techniques he will be using in his PhD to explore active travel to school.

Chris Button, opening a session on Facilitating Active Living, spoke about teaching Water Skills for Life to children in open water environments, where a greater range of competencies are required than when learning to swim in a pool. Kimberley King told us about the proposed Catalyst Project within the BEATS research programme. If funded, this project would include roadshows and support the students from rural secondary schools in Otago, New Zealand to conduct their own research projects and develop innovative ways to encourage healthy behaviours in their schools and communities. Kathleen Galvin and colleagues had found that physical activity reduced the odds of men taking androgen deprivation therapy having sexual dysfunction in their international study of men with prostate cancer. Kirsten Coppell rounded off the session with a talk on findings from the BEATS study on diet of adolescents in the Otago region, given that more than one-third of adolescents in New Zealand are overweight or obese. They found that adolescents in urban areas were more likely to consume junk food more often than their peers in rural areas.

After a lunch spent networking, the fourth plenary session started with Professor John Spence, from the University of Alberta, Canada, speaking about autonomous vehicles (AVs) and their potential for reducing active travel. He pointed out the essential biology of organisms has a number of consequences we need to remember. We are programmed to conserve energy and therefore minimise our physical activity levels. We therefore seek energy efficiencies and love ‘progress traps’.

The environment, such as food availability, shapes our physical activity. Therefore exercise-based interventions are constrained by our biology and are ineffective if the environment and structural factors are not considered. He advocated having 24-hour movement guidelines that include sleep and sedentary behaviour as well as physical activity. To be maintained, physical activity must be FUN: fulfilling; useful (active travel can save money and time); and/or necessary. He referred to work by Milakis et al and Crayton and Meier. One advantage for many people of autonomous vehicles is the value of travel time to do other things. There could also be fuel savings. Proponents of AVs welcome the ability of those who can no longer drive to use motor vehicles, and the ability of AVs to be involved in fewer crashes than when people are driving, thus saving lives from road travel injuries. However, the adverse consequences of the loss of physical activity could swamp the health benefits. [JM to insert photo of John Spence in the WordPress version]

Gareth Fairweather, now at the New Zealand Ministry of Transport, spoke about his work in London. As a former town planner there, Gareth had modelled the scenario of a predicted increase in London’s population to 10.8 million by 2041, needing 66,000 new homes for this projected growth plus the current backlog in housing, and a 23% increase of 5 million additional trips per day. He spoke about the importance of developing vibrant streets for a better public realm.

Ben Wooliscroft reiterated that New Zealand is dominated by a car culture. He spoke about ‘nudging’ – pushing people towards the path of least resistance without engaging the conscious. Supermarkets do it through the positioning of items in the store and on the shelves and checkouts. Major multinational food and drink brands promoting high-calorie, nutrient poor (junk) food and drinks do it all the time. He pointed out that mode shift is a wicked problem – one with no easy solution. There have been huge changes in travel modes over decades but roads have not changed much, in general. In the 1960s, Christchurch had the same mode share as the Netherlands.

He also talked about the latent demand problem and therefore the importance of bringing marketing tools to bear on modal choice. Most research falls either into the area of infrastructure research or of consumer decision research (for example material culture, aspirations, social norms, and habits). He explained the importance of the ‘messy’ cultural and societal bits inbetween these, such as enforcement, the media, law, and stereotypes. He pointed out that cars and firearms have similar energy levels but the legal responsibility is very different. He also referred to the ‘hate-ism’ against bikes (often referred to as bikelash). Infrastructure is necessary but insufficient for mode shift – and is not always necessary if the culture is appropriate. For example, the approach in the Netherlands of providing separate infrastructure for cycles and cars is now changing back to shared use. We need to monitor and measure, understand, and change much more than just the roads – a culture change is required.

These are brief comments on the talks and what I took form them. Further information is available in the TALES Proceedings booklet.

I will describe the debate the Future of Transport in a further blog. Watch this space!