Perth's riding to work rates are the lowest in the country, but other cities show how change can come quickly with smart infrastructure investments and active travel encouragement.
Perth is Australia’s most car-dependent city, with only 4% riding or walking to work, according to researchers.
They found big cities with urban sprawls like Perth’s had much greater car dependency.
Perth ranked 518th of 794 assessed cities for car dependence around the world; Canberra was the least car-dependent Australian city, ranking 445th.
People on higher incomes were also more likely to leave the tredly in the garage and drive to work, researchers Rafael Prieto-Curiel and Juan Ospina found, writing in Environment International.
“…urban mobility dominated by oversized, single-occupant vehicles is out of sync with our evolving needs,” they wrote, noting cities like Paris and Barcelona were demonstrating how vehicle-dependence could be shifted – and quickly.
More and better shared paths, congestion zones and charges, de-paving roads, restricting car parking and investing in urban green spaces were just some of the methods used by these and other cities to achieve change.
The recent WA Budget revealed some $200m+ is earmarked for WA’s shared path network over the next four years, with long term expansion blueprints currently less than 50% fulfilled.
“Build a city for cars and that’s what people will use,” said WestCycle. “It’s time to complete the bike network so people in Perth have a range of transport options that benefit their health, their wallets and the environment in which they live and work.”
Find out more about WestCycle’s Active Transport Vision here.
Check out some global visualisations of the research data here.
WA Today covered the research here.
