KEY POINTS:
Delegates at a national walking conference in Auckland are calling for a heftier share of infrastructure spending, after being told by Transport Minister Annette King that pedestrians are good for the economy.
Ms King, who arrived at the Waipuna Conference Centre on foot yesterday morning, said new Government research revealed health benefits of $1 a kilometre for pedestrians and 50c for cyclists.
Those were conservative values, but more than double a 2002 estimate of 44c for pedestrians and 16c for cyclists.
"Walking is certainly one of my favoured modes," Ms King told about 170 delegates at the two-day conference, which has been organised by Living Streets Aotearoa with sponsorship from the newly-formed New Zealand Transport Agency.
"It's environmentally, socially and economically sustainable, it's healthy and even makes good economic sense - particularly in a world where the price of oil has been reaching record levels.
"More than all that, however, walking is fun."
Ms King acknowledged land use and transport policies throughout the world had over the years become more oriented to motor vehicles at the expense of walking and cycling.
One survey showed New Zealanders made 400,000 fewer daily journeys on foot in 1998 than eight years earlier, and the decline was particularly noticeable in schoolchildren.
But she said the Government was putting extra funding towards "doubling the feet on the street."
That is the theme of the conference, which is grappling with how to meet a target of the updated New Zealand Transport Strategy of increasing the proportion of walking and cycling trips to 30 per cent by 2040, compared with 17 per cent now.
Ms King said the official amount allocated to walking and cycling in the national land transport programme had risen from $1 million in 2002 to $18 million this year.
But she said the actual investment was double that, at $36 million, because of walking and cycling infrastructure now incorporated into many roading projects.
Some delegates raised concerns that although the Government funded state highways, and gave local councils about half the cost of building and maintaining roads, it gave communities no assistance for the upkeep of footpaths.
Living Streets president Celia Wade-Brown acknowledged that the cost of maintaining footpaths was less than for roads, but pointed to a high cost of falls by older people on uneven surfaces.
Transport Agency senior safety engineer Tim Hughes had told the conference earlier that council engineers and consultants should always consider "who's the boss we are designing for" and treat the pedestrian as "king".
