Keeping Connected; across the urban sprawl
Jemina Paul (TMR)
Session: 3
Room: Meeting Room 8
Summary: The discussion was about accessing urban facilities such as health and wellbeing, jobs, education, etc. Public transport, land tax, and micro-mobility were discussed. They concluded by conducting research on users' attitudes and opinions about the equitable urban domain, emphasised public transport and micro-mobility.
Spooky Disasters
Adrian Webb (Cities Research Institute Griffith University)
Session: 3
Room: Meeting Room 6
Summary: What can we do if three successive crises make public transit demand almost double in Southeast Queensland? This session, organised as a brainstorm, addressed this question. Several options, like taking seats out of some trains, encouraging work from home, giving out free bikes, encouraging carpooling, emerged.
However, those decisions always needed to find a place between short-term crisis management and long-term planning. It was actually revealed at the end of the session that similar patronage increases had happened in Victoria between 2006-2009, a crisis ‘solved’ at the time with extra trams shipped from France to respond to the emergency.
Operating contracts
Paul Davies (Cities Research Institute Griffith University)
Session: 3
Room: Meeting Room 7
Summary: Strike key clause to improve contracts—on-time running. Ten-year horizons on timetables hurt customers and operators. Contracts could operationalize good citizen behaviours to deliver better services. Current contracts rely too heavily on one tool to measure and solve everything. The contract manager's role is a huge pivot point, should identify KPIs that are meaningful, tease out the pain points, adapt the contract to suit desired outcomes, and establish problem-resolution processes that don’t immediately reach legal disputes. Look at the desired customer outcome and use data that measures that. Contracts need to be less prescriptive, and seek more collaboration between the operator and state.
Modeling and planning to understand transport needs.
Tom Grohovaz (TMR)
Session: 3
Room: Meeting Room 6
Summary: For this session, Tom took us outside to enjoy the sunshine and discuss software and transport modeling. Are we limited by the software that we currently use? One issue that was raised was the willingness of individuals to learn new software. If a certain software is familiar, are we locked into a certain type of solution? Rick Williams from Movement & Place expressed the importance of being aware of the various packages that exist. It is understandable that we cannot understand each software, but how can we diversify our work environments to ensure we cover these gaps? Machine learning is challenging in Transport Planning, as many decisions and ideas are informed by top-level decision-making. How can we ensure political influences do not impede transport innovation and the ongoing exploration of new thinking and approaches?