WalkSydney

Media

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Some of our recent quotes and mentions:

2024

  • Why high school kids need help crossing the road – SMH 28/4/2024
    • Pedestrian advocacy group WalkSydney also wants speed limits on local roads reduced to 30km/h. WalkSydney president Marc Lane said the simplest and most cost-effective way of stopping road violence was to reduce speed. “By keeping speeds too high [Transport for NSW] is allowing road violence to continue,” he said.
  • ‘Greener, safer, calmer’: The plan to discourage drivers from central Sydney – SMH 16/3/2024
    • The walking strategy is backed by pedestrian lobby group WalkSydney, whose president Marc Lane said the city “would be a lot better starting with a policy of fewer noisy, polluting vehicles”. Lane said a street filled with pedestrians was a greater economic resource than a high street choked with traffic. “Having spent billions on a massive motorway network to bypass the city, now is the time to start removing cars from city streets that these tunnels replace and reprioritising space for people to walk,” he said. WalkSydney also wants the council to push harder on lowering the speed limit to 30 km/h and wants action on issues such as traffic light timing under the control of the state government. Lane said the council’s efforts to make streets more pedestrian-friendly were also undermined by traffic signals that do not prioritise walkers, state government roads that are dangerous to cross due to lack of crossings or excessive speed limits, and “urban highways” through central Sydney.
  • Parents are too scared to let their children walk to school. Will $10 million change that? – SMH 29/1/2024
    • WalkSydney president Marc Lane said Australian cities did not have a walking environment that allowed children to autonomously move around their local areas. Lane said many parents monitored their children’s walk to and from school because they were worried about cars. “Our walking environments to school are often hostile – large busy roads, poor crossings, a default speed of 50 km/h which is often fatal,” he said. “And we continue to focus on treatments like pedestrian bridges on school routes that further suppress walking.”

2023

  • Councils want crackdown on speeding cyclists putting pedestrians at risk, 1/10/23, Sydney Morning Herald.
    • WalkSydney president Marc Lane said lowering speed limits on local streets to 30 km/h would have a greater impact on reducing pedestrian injuries, as they would be more comfortable for most cyclists to use rather than the footpath.
  • Inner West Council Plan to Drop Speed Limits to 40 km/h, 7/10/23, Sydney Morning Herald.
    • WalkSydney spokeswoman Lena Huda welcomed the council’s plan to cut speeds but said motorists should be limited to 30km/h on local streets. Huda said cities such as Berlin, Tokyo, London and Paris had 30km/h speed limits on most local streets: ‘The global best practice is to set 30km/h speed limits where cars mix with people walking and cycling.’
  • ‘They pay for themselves’ – Why more Australian families are ditching cars for e-bikes, 8/10/23, The Guardian.
    • Even pedestrian advocacy group WalkSydney wants governments to help incentivise e-bike uptake, as it notes the priority given to cars is forcing some e-bike users on to footpaths. Lena Huda, a WalkSydney spokesperson, said teenagers are increasingly embracing e-bikes, gaining a level of independence and safety they haven’t been able to as pedestrians on car-centric streets. “It’s heartening to witness self-reliant young individuals who don’t rely on their parents for transportation,” she says. “However, when seeing these young e-bike riders, I’m concerned that they often end up sharing pedestrian spaces, which can pose challenges, particularly for elderly pedestrians.”
    • The solution, according to WalkSydney, is dedicated lanes for cars, separated with physical barriers from cycleways, which are themselves separate from footpaths. Limiting car speeds on local streets without bike lanes to 30km/h will also make more cyclists and e-bike users comfortable. “If more people can safely ride on the street, fewer people ride on the footpath,” Huda said.
  • ‘Dangerous to ride’: The suburbs getting $39m to turn drivers into cyclists – 21/1/23, SMH
    • WalkSydney president Lena Huda welcomed the funding but said $39 million was “nowhere near enough” to build the footpaths and pedestrian crossings necessary to make walking easier and more attractive. Huda said the Perrottet government spent $117 million under its active transport program – projects worth another $100 million missed out on funding. “Unfortunately, governments’ underinvestment in crossings, footpaths and cycleways means there are still too many places where people don’t have the options to leave the car at home,” she said. Huda said cheap initiatives such as lowering speed limits on local streets to 30km/h and automated pedestrian phasing at signals would improve pedestrian safety.
  • No more parks, 30km/h streets: three big ideas to make Sydney better – 5/2/23, SMH
    • If you’re one of those drivers who gets frustrated by 40km/h zones, then you probably won’t love Lena Huda’s big idea: slowing down to 30km/h. The founder of lobby group 30 Please wants the default speed limit on local streets to be reduced from 50km/h to 30km/h. So while that wouldn’t apply to main roads or freeways, about four out of five Sydney streets would become 30 zones. While the safety benefits are straightforward, Huda’s broader aim is to recast our relationship with cars and create a “new norm” that encourages walking and cycling as primary forms of transport.

2022

2020

  • Police want overnight shutdown of new railway bridge over crime concerns – 20/12/20, SMH
    • Advocacy group WalkSydney said in its submission the bridge should not be controlled by payment gates, nor should residents need an Opal card to cross, adding that raising issues of potential criminality was an “attempt to breed fear in the community”. “Rest assured that criminals can get smart cards, too,” the submission said.