Highlights from the 2 Walk and Cycle conference July 2016

Auckland hosted the national 2 Walk and Cycle Conference, 6-8 July.
Six people were invited to share their thoughts at the close of the conference.

Dougal List, NZTA: tell the "why story" - why we are investing in cycling. Collaborate, benchmark against high quality projects, celebrate the wins.

Ellen Blake, Living Streets Aotearoa: advocate for walkable compact cities, for everyone from 8 to 80s. NZTA, where are the targets, and  money for walking?

Jack Jiang, AECOM: Good to see more diversity. Used to be the lone architect at these conferences. Expand the range of disciplines.  Streets for people, gender diversity, culture diversity, imagery, European only? Collaborate with architects and engineers

Warren Salomon, Australian consultant: NZ is travelling well, and isahead of Australia. Christchurch will host the Asia Pacific cycling congress in October 2017. Focus on sustainability on a planet with 7 billion people. Make friends with walking advocates.

Jamie Hosking, University of Auckland: Make connections e.g. Auckland bike challenge + north-west path + Unitec. Bikes in Schools + Future streets. Need a connected network. Connect organisations, Healthy Auckland Together, obesity, need active-friendly cities. Sensible speeds.

Claire Sherrington, Cycling Action Network: shout out for Te Awa path, CAN goals, safety, whole town with safer speeds, cycling is "better than fun", streets are for kissing, says Enrique Penalosa, children, normalize biking. When you say no, you say yes to obesity, congestion etc. Do it now, connect, make things happen.