Moving forward!

The Carlton Residents’ Association (CRA) has renamed its transport policy the “mobility policy” to reflect the changing nature of urban transport. 

The policy now provides a response to how residents, workers and visitors move around the municipality now and into the future and the importance we place on the liveability and sustainability of our suburb. 

In essence, good mobility needs to be safe, reliable, efficient, sustainable and accessible. In the longer term the objective should be to work toward sustainable mobility recognising the need to address mobility and its impact on climate change. 

This will require future proofing mobility by moving to EV vehicles, autonomous vehicles, and freeing up road space for public transport, trams and buses, extending footpaths, introducing shareable streets and increasing green spaces by freeing up road space. 

During the past 45 years our streets have changed dramatically from wide, treeless bitumen thoroughfares to attractive streets with medians and now mature trees. 

Through traffic has been reduced by street closures and calming measures such as lane reductions, controlled turns, speed humps. Bicycle and pedestrian paths have been improved and footpaths widened in the commercial areas to allow outdoor eating. The introduction of parklets has resulted in an improvement in outdoor dining, a reduction and slowing of traffic and improved amenity and safety for pedestrians. It has also encouraged patrons to travel by walking, cycling and public transport.  

Carlton has had good public transport for a long time and improvements have been made such as the underground rail line now under construction. Tram stops have been improved to enable those with a disability, children, and older persons to have ease of access and safety. We believe that the remaining step-up tram stops should be replaced with those providing for the access required by all. 

There are still areas for improvement and issues of concern that are covered in the mobility policy that is now available to CRA members and interested members of our community. For those interested in receiving a copy please send us an email with the subject “mobility policy copy”.

The mobility policy was prepared for CRA by Peter Sanders, Blair Healy, Antoinette Sagaria, and Martin Brennan. •

For more information: 

[email protected]