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Thank you, Jo. Thank you, Minister Waldron, for hosting me
and for the event today, it's a delight to join you.
Even more, it's been a delight to visit your region over the last week.
Sports Medicine Australia hosted its annual conference down in Fremantle.
So I've been here over a week now.
My wife actually came for the beginning of the visit
and has already told me we're coming back on a holiday
when there's no work involved and we can just go play.
Because we've really enjoyed it. One of the activities was on Sunday,
on the absolute perfect, pristine spring day,
we were out on Rottnest Island,
we cycled around the island, which was just delightful.
We also cycled from Fremantle up to town, along the...
No, I was not in the water. Thank you very much.
We do not need any more Americans in the water out there, apparently.
Much to my... - (LAUGHTER)
- They figured out that we are the most obese nation in the world, I think.
You've heard that data about the Americans.
Apparently we're the tastiest, too.
Really sad, actually, of course, and I don't mean to make light.
We cycled up along the Swan River, the cycle track system,
which is quite impressive in the region,
and many of your communities are a part of that.
And I knew I'd made it to Perth when I saw the big sign,
that we'd pulled in, have you ever noticed that?
"In case you're wondering, you're here, you're in Perth now."
I assume that that's why that's placed there.
And we had a delightful ride,
in fact, right here through Applecross, not far from this building, we rode by.
I'd like to make a few quick points this morning.
Basically, four things that builds directly on Fiona's case,
and much of it is stuff that you're familiar with.
A bit of perspective, if you'll indulge me.
And a clear message on building active environments, if I can use the term,
and you'll understand what I mean before I'm done.
The notion that this will only happen with real comprehensive policy change.
I would argue that in this movement we have been winning battles,
a nice trail here, a wonderful sport complex there, but losing the war.
We've got a generation of kids who still don't meet the recommendations.
Half of them don't meet the recommendations.
We're losing the war. That's not sufficient.
And I'm gonna make the case that, indeed, we all,
anybody who's in public service has to see ourselves as a public health agent.
In fact, to that end, my wife challenged me,
we have elected planning commissions rather than appointed in my community,
and our planning board, our planning commission
is actually the permit granting authority.
When somebody wants to build a new housing subdivision,
they come through, and I serve on that board, is my point.
My wife called my bluff and said, "You go around the world,
you're Mr National Expert, blah, blah, blah,
you have to serve on our board, be a gatekeeper."
So I'm a local elected official
and I know all of the challenges and how hard it is.
And yet I believe, I've tried to convince all of my colleagues
on the board and on council and my mayor,
that indeed we are all public health agents.
So I hope you leave here embracing that.
To that end, I'm gonna ask you to do me a favour.
This is my exercise in perspective.
If everyone would think back to your earliest fond recollection
of having been physically active as a youngster.
So I want you to go back as far as memory serves.
So not high school sport programs, things like that.
Little, little kids, like the little ones I saw running around
on this emblem in the pavement over in Subiaco, that age kid.
Think back to your earliest recollection of being active.
Got it? Now I want you to share it with the person next to you,
ten seconds each, just turn to each other and say,
"Here's what I remember, my earliest recollection of being active."
Go ahead, right now, take 20 seconds. Quickly.
- (ALL CHATTER LOUDLY)
- I'd say, "I'm going off to the shop" and I'd go missing for hours.
- Sure.
What did you guys say, if I may ask?
- Kindergarten on the ropes. - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- In the back yard. - With friends from the neighbourhood?
- Probably soccer players.
- Kicking the ball.
All right.
Now, I don't wanna be unkind,
because I know... I know it would be much more fun
to take the next 30 minutes and just have those recollections
and pretend we're all that young and energetic again,
but I'm afraid I've got a point to make on this.
And so I'll ask you to raise your hands.
I heard of people out venturing in the neighbourhood,
playing in the back yard, sort of taking off on bicycles.
Raise your hand,
I'm gonna ask a series of questions and I'd like you to raise your hand,
it's the only physical activity I'm gonna ask you to do this morning,
if your answer is affirmative to my question.
How many of you did your recollection involve
having to be at the designated time and place at a specific time?
Raise your hand if that's your recollection?
How many of you remember only being with children of the same age
and gender during your recollection? Same age and gender?
How many remember an adult having to be present for you to do the activity?
How many of you remember
uniforms being an important part of the activity that you were recalling?
How about having to have a referee or an umpire on hand?
How many did your recollection include that?
For how many of you did it involve
being with kids of different ages and different genders?
Older and younger kids playing together, boys and girls?
For how many of you was there not necessarily an adult present?
For how many of you could you have actually not got away with
what you were doing if an adult had in fact been present?
- (LAUGHTER)
- This one talked about going and playing in the canals,
the irrigation canals out on the farmland.
For how many of you was a wheeled vehicle involved,
a bicycle or a scooter or a skateboard or something like that?
For how many was water involved, swimming in it, fishing in it,
damming up a neighbourhood creek, chasing water creatures?
For how many of you, if you'll indulge me,
allow me to use a term of art that will be familiar,
but maybe not used in this context,
how many of you would say, to one degree or another,
"I was kind of a free range kid? A free range child?"
Your term was, "I was able to go missing for hours,
disappear on a Saturday morning and Mum might not know where I was till..."
In my case, I was told not to come home until dinner time.
My mother, "Out of the house."
So two more questions, the only questions that matter today,
from a public health standpoint, bear with me.
How many of you believe the majority of children today,
the majority of kids today are free range kids?
Last question. How many of you would assert that it is good for their health
that they're not free range kids?
Good thing we don't have free range kids anymore
fighting the childhood obesity epidemic that we've heard about?
That's pretty interesting. Think about our last three answers.
One, it's only a generation or two ago, we're not that old in the room,
that we were free range, lots of free range kids.
Two, we don't have free range kids anymore.
And three, we all agree it's probably not good for them.
If you ask me, that's all we have to know.
In fact, that is my portfolio on my local planning commission.
My goal is to rebuild a world where we can have free range kids again
because I sincerely believe it can be done,
I believe we have data from people like Fiona that tell us we can,
and that is a singularly important goal
and I challenge you all to think about it.
Let's rebuild a world where we can have free range kids.
I do not pretend that I am in particular any smarter than anybody else,
there are other people talking about it,
a gentleman named Richard Louv has actually written a book
called Last Child In The Woods.
He talks about the fact that kids don't spend time anymore,
he's coined the term nature deficit disorder.
To his credit, he doesn't say we have to give kids drugs for it,
he says we have to get them back outside, and he recognises that
even urban-dwelling kids used to spend time outdoors.
A pick-up game of football on a neighbourhood empty lot.
It wasn't always that you had a sports facility to do that.
Indeed, Shane Gould, a decorated former Olympic swimmer here,
last time I was here in Queensland,
at this very same conference two years ago, came out to say
she feels kids are actually held back by over-organised play,
by everything being structured and with a start time and a finish time.
She said, "Where is the creativity and the inventiveness
of making up your own games in the back yard?
Where are the leadership skills of selecting teams
and acting as a team captain,
the negotiation skills of arguing it out when the ball goes out of bounds?"
When there's always an adult present, you don't develop any of that skill set.
Louv talks a lot about it.
Now, when we ask parents,
"Why don't you let your kid go walk to school anymore?
Why can't they cycle to a friend's house?
Why do you insist on driving them to the sports facility for practice?
Why can't they ride a bike?" What's their answer?
Not a rhetorical question. I'm asking sincerely, what do they say?
It's not safe! My God, there are horrifying, scary men
with big thick moustaches hiding behind every tree ready to abduct our child.
We talk about this a lot in the US.
We talked about it at the SMA conference last week.
Does anybody know, is there any evidence that violent crime against children
by people who don't know them, the scary abductors,
is it any worse now than it was 40 years ago?
Does anybody know what the data says?
Because I can tell you, in the US, we have looked very closely
at the longitudinal evidence and can find none.
Indeed, it is safer for children out there now,
because we know about it and we have stranger danger programs
and alerts and everything else. We are far more attuned to children's safety.
They are no worse off. But the media covers it in a way to petrify parents.
We have parents in the United States absolutely terrified
that their children are at grave risk,
not recognising that the real risk our children in the US face
is that one in three children born today
will end up with type 2 diabetes in their lifetime.
Let me say it again, in the US, one in three kids born today.
And the tragedy is, the way your data is progressing,
you will not be far behind us here in Australia.
If you project forward, the levels of inactivity we're seeing
in the generation now... Correct, Fiona?
..we're gonna see data like that here. Very disturbing.
Indeed, we can already look at the obesity data,
and I won't bore you with lots of data, I'll give you the short version of this.
I don't think... You'll hear about the obesity epidemic,
the media picks up on it, I don't think it's what we should be talking about.
We should be talking about the real drivers,
twin epidemics of inactivity and poor nutrition.
That's what's really behind this. Kids aren't active enough
and they don't eat well enough. In fact, nor do adults.
I think, let's change the conversation.
If you look, by the way, at the things driving up healthcare costs
in the developed nations, and in particular US, Canada, Australia, UK,
it is, indeed, three things.
Physical inactivity, poor nutrition and tobacco use. Let me be crystal clear,
if you wanna see taxes lower because we spend less on healthcare,
those are the three things you should do something about.
In the US, we're engaged in this foolhardy debate
about whether we have a single-payer system or a market-based system.
None of that matters! None of it matters.
What we have to do is have people be less sick.
That's how we'll lower healthcare costs.
So, to be crystal clear, inactivity and poor nutrition are the epidemics.
I will talk more about physical activity,
I will focus my comments there, largely because of my personal bias,
it's my background, I worked at the US Olympic training centre,
I was a competitive athlete, if you can call race walking a competitive sport.
I know it's a little odd.
In fact, there is photographic evidence that I was in fact a race walker.
Here it is, a picture from quite some time ago, and you're allowed to laugh,
I know it is the funniest-looking event in all of athletics.
And you can tell it was a very long time ago that I competed
because we only had black-and-white photography back then.
And the other giveaway is that those shorts were actually in style
back when I was competing. This is the 1928 National Championships.
- (LAUGHTER)
- Many people will ask, "Why, Mark, did you choose the race walk
and why the 50k if you could have entered the short race, the 20K?"
The answer is obvious when I show you the next slide.
Of course, it's the huge crowds that showed up at our competitions.
- (LAUGHTER)
- This being the start of the 1984 Olympic trials, I'm not making this up,
where, like the marathon, we start in the athletics stadium,
go out and do a loop in the city and then come back in to finish.
And they start us very early in the day to avoid the heat.
Not unlike the Marathon on Rottnest the other day,
they started at six in the morning, and so at six in the morning,
well, at ten in the morning, when we finished, the stadium was packed,
we came in, other events were going on,
it was quite thrilling, the seats were all full.
But at six in the morning, if you look very, very closely,
you can see my mum and dad right here. - (LAUGHTER)
- And that's really them. I'm not making that up.
So I have a long history in competitive sport.
I've coached, I believe deeply in it.
But I've gotta tell you, I think from a public health standpoint,
colleagues like Fiona and Trevor have really helped me to understand
we gotta boil the message down, keep it simple so everybody understands it.
And I think one version might be three numbers.
We often teach people when they're gonna go do local testimony
before council or planning permission,
just have these three numbers in your pocket, 30, 45, and 1.5.
For Australia I think these are perfectly relevant.
The 30, of course, would be the three times ten,
or the 30 minutes per day that Fiona reminded us
guidelines tell us we should all be physically active.
The 45 is the percentage of probably Australian adults
on the national level that meet that.
You are blessed that at least here in Western Australia
that number's closer to 60 percent
that are actually getting the 30 minutes a day, so good on you for that.
But unfortunately, if you look at the national data,
the 1.5 represents dollars.
Namely $1.5 billion in national expenditures
on physical inactivity and poor nutrition.
By the way, compiled nicely in a circular,
and notably, Heart Foundation, Planning Institute Of Australia
and the Australian Local Government Association
worked together on to create.
So let me say that again, these kind of data are summarised
by planning and health promotion and local government entities
working together, which is how the conversation is changing now.
And I think it reminds us we all have a role to play.
Now, these are the guidelines that Fiona mentioned.
I don't wanna labour it. I only wanna point out this photo.
My wife and I, after we took our ride into Perth Friday evening
and saw the opening ceremonies of the Festival of Lights downtown there,
we then wandered up to Hay Street and it was packed with people,
none of whom are consciously out exercising,
but if they wander around for half an hour, moving with some purpose,
they're getting some of their 30 minutes of activity a day.
You could make the case that the design of the Hay Street pedestrian way there
is an encouragement to physical activity without any conscious effort to do so.
And I think it's really important.
And it begs the question then,
why, if people understand the message that is that simple,
which they do, when you look at national surveys,
people know they're supposed to exercise, they've heard it, right?
Why is it so hard to get them to do it?
And I think the answer is what I call the stickiness problem.
And this is the last bit of health data I'll make you look at,
it's a nice study by a colleague of mine
that basically tried to get people to walk 40 minutes a day.
He's at the University of Pittsburgh in the US.
They had three groups, one was told, walk your 40 minutes all at once,
one was told, four times ten, break it into ten minute walks if you like,
the third group was told not only four ten minute walks
but we'll put a treadmill in your house so you can jump on any time you like.
Interestingly enough, all the groups were encouraged to walk and given prizes
and T-shirts and water bottles, cos that's what we do in health promotion,
we give out T-shirts and water bottles, right? Right?
You've seen it, haven't you, at special events? It's wonderful, it works.
All three groups increased their exercise minutes over six months.
But that's not the interesting question. The interesting question is
after I leave you to your own devices
and I'm not sending you an email reminder and calling you on the phone
and having walking groups, what do you do?
And what John measured is that despite the fact that at this point
the people have significantly lost weight and were more aerobically fit
from just 30 to 40 minutes walking a day,
they were getting healthier, despite that,
when left to their own devices, the activity levels dropped dramatically.
It's what I call the stickiness problem. We can get short-term behaviour change,
but getting it to stick seems to be a problem.
And although there's not lots of this research literature,
it tends to all point in the same direction.
Any of us that have been doing it for decades
are frustrated by this reality.
And indeed, the weight loss research literature
is full of studies that show early weight loss followed by regain.
So when we hear the words obesity epidemic,
that's really based on the fact that it seems we can't maintain
the activity levels and the nutritional changes over time.
That leaves us with this conclusion.
Maybe, just maybe, we should stop trying to tell everybody,
and in particular the 40 percent that aren't active yet,
that they need to go to the gym, that they need to join a sport program.
Maybe we should help them build it into their daily lives.
And I'm back to my notion of free range kids.
If kids are free range then they're getting that activity,
and by the way, children need more like an hour a day minimum,
the half-hour is not sufficient,
and any of us that work in the field know they need more still, right?
The real recommendation for kids should probably be two hours a day.
So, sport and even school physical education will not be sufficient,
they need to be active, they need to be free range,
they need to able to disappear and go missing for a couple of hours a day,
active the whole time. Great idea, and what that says is
we can't just count on exercise facilities and programs,
they are important, they are necessary conditions for success,
they are not sufficient, we need to build facilities here.
The cycle route right along Kwinana Freeway there
that we were riding in the other night...
In fact, we were riding here about rush hour, about 5:30 in the evening.
I was stunned at the number of cyclists coming towards me, departing the city.
They'd come across the Narrows Bridge, they were on their way out to wherever,
here and other communities, as part of their daily commute,
avoiding that, by the way, headache of traffic on the freeway there,
as best I could see it.
But, and this is important,
we do not have to turn everybody into a hardcore, lycra-wearing cyclist
who cycles 20km to and from work every day.
These mums pushing prams, just walking for errands in downtown Subiaco,
at one of the activity centres there, that's just fine.
If we get them to accumulate the 30 minutes a day,
and this is really important, because when we start this conversation,
many people push back and say, "You know, not everybody is gonna be
a skinny little serious 100km bicycle rider."
And I say, "Fine. Can I get them to walk 3K with their child to school,
morning and afternoon, back and forth?
One and the half K in and one and a half K out."
Cos that would be just grand.
That's how we have to think about this, OK? That counts.
So you should say, "Is there any evidence?"
Fiona alluded to it, but what do we really know?
What does the evidence tell us about environments where that happens,
where people get more incidental activity?
I would tell you that these four things serve for me as a checklist
on my local planning board.
Every permit application that comes before us,
I try to filter through four things.
I wanna see a greater variety of different kinds of uses
within walk, bike and transit distance of one another,
I want them to be well-connected by bicycle ways, pedestrian facilities,
transit, I want the destination, when I get there, to reward me
rather than punish me for showing up without my car.
Think about standard suburban-style retail design,
it says, "Come here with your car."
God forbid you try to walk across this parkade to get to the front door.
And last but not least, safe and accessible for all users.
Young, old, wealthy, not so wealthy,
people with physical disabilities, the blind, somebody in a wheelchair,
the mum pushing the pram, everybody, the guy pulling the luggage cart up there.
In other words, those kerb ramps serve not just the person in a wheelchair
but the mum pushing a pram, the person pulling their luggage.
So, indeed, this stuff is not news I hope to you, you've heard all of it.
Our colleagues in planning have been talking about it
at their conferences for two decades.
I go and speak at planning conferences and every head is nodding,
"Yeah, yeah! We've been saying that!"
They're just excited to hear that the data now confirms
these are indeed healthier settings.
They are stickier. Remember my stickiness problem?
Stickier for physical activity.
Do a good walking initiative in this environment,
it's gonna be more likely to stick than in this environment,
where we haven't built it.
So what do we need? More compact neighbourhoods with open space,
shared park space, open space fields, sporting facilities,
mixed use right down to the neighbourhood level.
Retail on the first floor, residential above,
neighbourhood stores, schools, pocket parks.
The network then has to connect these different kinds of destinations
and it's all the different pieces, the pavement, the multi-use trails,
dual-use pathways, cycle routes, transit,
and I show you a bus here to remind ourselves.
There is data to tell us transit users, someone who regularly uses transit,
gets more daily physical activity. They've done studies confirming that
the mere act of walking to and from the bus,
to and from the train at either end of your trip,
likely gives you a substantial portion of the 30 minutes a day.
And remember, we can break it up, it counts, Fiona told me, three times ten.
I can walk to the train ten minutes in the morning,
ten minutes for errands at lunchtime,
ten minutes back from the train in the evening,
I got my 30, I'm at lower risk for cardiovascular disease
and type 2 diabetes. The third is the destination,
and I talked about that design where it's the giant parking lot in front,
the building set back, that clearly says, "Ride your car here."
That was our standard here in the US,
and I'm stunned to see how much of it I've seen here
in the Greater Perth region,
that suburban-style, big box stores.
We thought that was the answer, when in fact we know more people walk, cycle
and take transit in the more traditional downtown design.
Again, none of this surprising to you.
So, bringing the building to the street, things like street trees and awnings,
benches, we used to call those amenities.
I don't allow myself to use that language anymore
because I learned from my 82-year-old mother-in-law
that she might not choose to walk to the nearby grocery store
if there's not a bench along the way for her to stop at
and awnings on the building that provide shade on a really hot summer day.
Here in Western Australia, it's gonna be hot come December, January,
give her a bench and a tree covering it with some shade, more likely to walk.
So we might think of it as an amenity, but it is not.
It's actually a functional attribute.
And last but not least, it has to be safe.
All these features that you see engineers are now putting in the road.
Kerb extensions where it bumps out,
mid-block islands like these refuge islands for the crossing, circles.
You'll note, by the way, clever design.
Our engineering colleagues, it costs no more to design this right,
all they've done is put a little jog in the sidewalk, the crossing here.
Now, you'll know that's the US, cars are on the other side of the street,
the opposite direction,
and what we're forcing is the pedestrian to look toward oncoming traffic,
by them angling through the median island there. Does everybody see that?
It's a subtle element design, it does not cost a nickel more to do,
but it's an improved setting for both the pedestrian and the driver,
who doesn't end up with a pedestrian walking out in front of them.
Everyone is happier with better design.
Another example, we did a walkabout or a walk audit
down in Fremantle as part of the conference workshop,
and just outside the Esplanade Hotel, we saw a lot of this diagonal style parking
which is common, it's a great way to get higher density,
it tends to narrow the street,
rather than build another surface parking structure parkade,
I can get more cars on the street.
Business owners tend to like it. More parking, more business.
But there are some problems with that, not least of all
when you go to pull out, what are you looking at?
Often the side of the big SUV next to you, right? The big vehicle.
But worse, when my mum pulls in here and she's got my kids in the back seat
and they open the rear doors, where do the kids tend to go?
Out into the street. And when she's going to put the groceries in the boot,
where is she standing? Out in the road, right?
Now, I can solve all those problems
and still get the density that the local business owner likes
with a completely crazy idea, which is what?
How could I give them all the benefits but solve the challenges?
Because, by the way, cyclists hate riding behind this.
Because there's a very high probability that somebody is gonna clip you.
Cos they just can't see you till the last moment.
In the US, by the way, as an engineering standard,
I don't allow striping of a bicycle line behind that kind of parking.
Cos it is that dangerous for cyclists.
So how can I solve it? Does anybody know, is anybody using it?
Maybe you're using it in one of your communities.
I know it's been done here in Australia, I've seen it in other places. No?
What if I turn the cars around, change the angle and put the boot to the kerb?
So I drive past my parking space and pull in like that.
So now open the back doors, the kids are actually directed to the sidewalk,
to the pavement, and when Mum's putting the groceries in the boot,
she's standing on the pavement, and when I go to pull out,
I'm actually looking at the cyclist I'm not gonna run over.
Now, all of that sounds great.
You tell me, "Boy, if I were to mention that to my engineer,
my planner, my public works director, they would say what?"
Not a rhetorical question. I'm curious, what would the reaction be?
"Too dangerous. It's weird. We don't know how to back into those spots.
We've got drivers here who could never back in here."
We get that all the time. "But we have an older population here."
To which I ask, if I have people who cannot back into an empty parking space,
should they be backing out into an active travel lane?
Indeed, from an engineering standpoint, this is just my inner engineer,
cos that's what I was trained at, the answer is no!
So if you're telling me you have drivers incapable of doing the reverse manoeuvre
then take out all your diagonal parking right now.
And then they say, "Well, what does the evidence say?"
And I say, "Lower severity of collisions,
lower frequency, safer for pedestrians and bicycles."
Let's not react emotionally, let's react based on the evidence.
And the evidence says this design can be used and is.
And by the way, back in Fremantle,
we've got drivers that have already figured it out.
Look at this, up and down the way there, I could find over the last five days,
every once in a while, there'd be a car parked in, they'd put boot to kerb
cos it's easier to take the luggage out for the hotel,
and the pull-out's gonna be easier.
They're doing it and it's not striped the right way.
So this is dangerous, right? And yet, there it is.
So my real point is not that I care how your diagonal parking works,
but that we need to counter emotional reactions,
which we tend to get whether it's this
or putting the cycle track in the back of our property
or adding a bike lane to the street.
We tend to have kind of a knee-jerk reaction to those.
And we have to respond with evidence which says
here's what we know about this, here's how roundabouts actually work better,
slow traffic, and indeed can work well for pedestrians if designed properly,
over a signalised intersection.
We've got data. Let's use the science. Let's design it the right way.
And, again, none of this probably new to you, but I'll give you an example.
A circular, a position statement from the Heart Foundation
that talks about the built environment and walking,
summarises this kind of research, as does, I would argue,
Directions 2031, the regional planning document,
the guiding language for the region,
all of this stuff is in there and much more.
Far more sophisticated than I'd even remotely try to touch on.
Real thought about everything from activity centres,
which are really walk, bike and transit-oriented downtowns,
that's what we're talking about,
returning to a style of community design we had a century ago.
Small town centres, right?
We have many older folks, when we start to talk about this
and they hear it and go, "It sounds like the town I grew up in."
That's exactly right. So how do we get there?
I'm gonna leave you with three concluding thoughts
about what the approach is.
One, we've gotta focus on co-benefits, as my friend Trevor calls them.
Two, we really need leadership teams across the disciplines to do this.
And I'm challenging you to think about this in your communities as you go home.
Do I have a team really working on this consciously and actively?
And let's get the community engaged.
And rather than have just the knee-jerk reactions,
"We can't back into a parking space like that,"
let's have a thoughtful conversation where people get excited and say,
"God, I'd love our downtown to be safer for my kids to cycle,
I might let my child ride his bike down to the chemist to pick something up
if I felt he wasn't gonna get run over as he drove down the main way."
So, we have a bunch of natural allies with regard to the co-benefits.
You know all this. The environmental benefits, air quality.
I will remind you that in a region where water is such an issue,
and water quality and filtration systems,
the language we use in the US is called LID, Low Impact Design,
where we're trying to capture water more effectively,
not just have sheets of asphalt with storm water run-off
being contaminated and wasted.
You are having very much the same conversation here.
I will suggest to you the kinds of designs we're describing
are very beneficial from a water quality and water handling standpoint.
But public safety, from a social equity standpoint,
from the standpoint of schools that think about student transport,
and also the growing body of evidence that more physically active kids
perform better academically and act out less in the classroom,
give me that data and I'm onboard.
But I am happy to go to a local council and if they are recalcitrant
and they aren't sold by any of that other altruistic, greenie nut-job stuff,
I'll tell you the economics are the right answer.
I'll tell you that in the US, every study we've done
of housing values and walkability and bikeability connects them.
More walkable, bike and transit-friendly communities, higher housing values,
and during the recent downturn in the economy,
lower rate of foreclosures and mortgage failures.
Let me say that again.
Those neighbourhoods have held up better during the downturn in the economy.
You have some analogous data from here around housing values and so on,
and proximity to trails and so on.
Indeed, our National Association of Realtors
has published documents on common ground as an annual publication
for realtors, now these are business people.
They do not care about whether you get your 30 minutes a day.
They wanna sell houses, that's their job.
But their documentation says this is what American, not Dutch homebuyers...
This photo looks like it comes from the Netherlands, doesn't it?
And here it is on the front of a US realty publication
where they're saying, "This is what American buyers want."
The ability to walk a kid to a park, or to a sports facility,
to ride the bike to school, to walk to a transit stop or a corner store.
Those are higher value purchase things.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say when we have to make the economic case,
tools being developed by the World Health Organisation,
following on the very work that Fiona alluded to,
they've developed a tool called HEAT, Health Economic Assessment Tool,
that actually calculates dollar values
associated with building bicycle and pedestrian facilities,
based on the increase in physical activity
and reduction in healthcare costs,
or lifetime, life value, basically, statistical life value.
So one could take a corridor like the trail along Kwinana there,
along the freeway, and actually calculate out,
"OK, it cost us some amount to build that
but what are the savings associated with a facility like that
that allows people to cycle in and out to downtown?"
And the result in the US is
we're starting to have a very different conversation
about what healthy economic development looks like.
And we are seeing entire communities and regions
move away from this style of development and say,
"This stuff wasn't very sustainable."
I can go to any community in the United States
and find photographs of the under-subscribed strip mall
or big box store, where their vacancy rate is at unhealthy levels.
They've realised we could've been investing that in an energetic downtown
when we're out there building these big boxes,
sheets of asphalt around them, now largely empty.
Maybe this is the way to go,
and by the way, purely from an economic standpoint, more sustainable.
Two, you need a team that's on this, and it's not just public health people.
So, I could give you the big list of all the partners that need to be in this,
but quite frankly, if I start to draw an organisational chart,
you'd start with health and planning and transport,
but you'd acknowledge public works
and elected officials and neighbourhood associations,
Heart Foundation and recreation and parks and the hospitals,
employers and developers,
and way out in leftfield, those wacky bicycle and pedestrian advocates,
I guess they'll have to be part of an initiative.
Which is not a very organised chart, and I've seen communities convened,
"OK, we are gonna have a big partnership around this,"
they get 40 or 50 people at the table, and guess how much they get done.
Right? You put 40 people at the table, there's way too many opinions.
The successful communities that I am working with in the US
are creating a small, what I call stealth leadership team.
Stealth not because it's sneaky
but because these are people who have no ego,
it's not about them, it's about getting the vision attained.
Indeed, three things to be on my stealth team,
I'm not saying these are precisely the ten,
but you need that mix of disciplines,
it can't just be the health and sport and recreation people.
We need planning, we need engineering,
and they all have to be in the conversation.
And they have to be the people that are one phone call away,
one email away from that larger group.
So they are people that embrace the vision,
they see it as part of their job to do this
and they have high community influence.
And then they can set an agenda and they can say,
"These are the big five we're gonna work on."
By the way, totally selfish editorial comment here, this is my big five,
but if you told me, "Mark, I'm gonna give you a magic wand,
I'm gonna make you king of Applecross, you tell us what policy initiatives,"
these would be the five things I'd do.
They're the things I'm working on in my town through planning.
And what I wanna see is updated zoning, comprehensive planning,
and then zoning policies that reflect that, so don't just say it in your plan,
make your local ordinance actually create more of this
and less of the sprawling subdivisions.
More of the compact activity centre design,
again, it's all catalogued in the information you already have.
But it is about the practical nuts and bolts of doing it at the local level.
As a local planning commissioner, I can tell you,
if the developer comes in and asks for a waiver,
"I know we're supposed to put in the cycle track,
but it's gonna cost me a little more and I'd have to buy more right of way,
could you just give us a variance or a waiver?" That's the language we use.
So often it's in the ordinance and then we don't do it! We grant the variance.
The most important, the battleground, is at the local level.
You guys are the front line troops. I just can't say it strongly enough.
But I will say this,
we are using the economic downturn, the lull, to get the job done right now.
And so we're doing things like
not just assessing a new development based on traffic,
but on all the transportation modes, bike, walk and transit,
not just the number of cars that we're gonna move.
Second, complete streets. How many have heard the term?
I just have to check this. Has anyone heard the phrase "complete streets"?
It's a movement among engineers. Are you an engineer?
Right. You are? - No, I'm a pedestrian.
- Yeah, all right. There you go.
The notion of complete streets... As we all are, by the way. We all are.
Every time we touch a road, we take into account all four user groups.
Pedestrians, bicyclists, motor vehicles and transit.
And we don't just build the road for cars and add the pavement on the side
if there's enough room, we design for all four.
This is a national campaign in the United States,
but indeed, here in the UK,
here's the website for the national engineering professional association,
they're talking about it here.
And I would submit to you that every one of you could go home,
if you've not done anything else on this, pass a policy resolution.
"Whereas public health and economic benefits will accrue
if we make more complete streets,
be it resolved we will always take into account all four user groups."
That would be as easy as a council vote.
And we've seen a lot of communities do it.
But let's go a step further, let's have our engineering departments
actually make it a practice and build roadway design standards
all in the 2031 document that say it,
but most importantly, here's where we know we've made it in the United States,
when we get a community changing engineering practice
so that every time we go out to repave a road
we're gonna actually do it the right way.
And I have to turn you to yesterday's Western Australian newspaper
where, on the top, on the news page here,
we see a guy who's running a cycle-hire, bike-hire business in downtown Perth
that he also does a service so that if you cycle into work during the day
he does maintenance basically, he'll do work on your bike during the day
so that it's all ready to go when you come out in the afternoon.
That's all well and good, but it's not even connected to, just below it,
the article on the maintenance backlog on Western Australian roads.
We have some 2,000km of roads that are gonna have to be repaved
or fully rebuilt over the next decade. Let me say this about that.
You have a huge opportunity to make sure that every one of those,
when they are touched, whether it's a state road or one in local jurisdiction,
gets rebuilt the right way, gets rebuilt as a complete street for all users.
Huge opportunity. Third, think of trails not just as recreation
but as transportation corridors.
I love the fact that my wife and I could cycle up to Cottesloe and back
and along the water or along the river,
but frankly, what you really want are of those links
that connect a school to a neighbourhood,
that connect senior housing to shopping.
Those links are the ones that get a lot of transportation use,
there's good evidence on that, and I can't suggest strongly enough
that it is important about connecting the trail network
to the other elements of the system.
The pathways, the on-street cycle facilities,
all transit stops, all have to be connected.
And I was impressed in our ride up, and you'll recognise some of the locations,
that as we came from Fremantle to here, the different character.
Along the rail corridor, along the roadways,
through reserve areas along the river,
This boardwalk, my wife said, "You've gotta get a picture of this!"
They've made the effort to put the boardwalk right along the water here,
in Applecross where there's clearly a property restriction,
and along the highway there,
and those are just a glimpse into the different uses.
Fourth, transit and bike-friendly policies.
This is an entire discipline called transportation demand management.
I'll only say that communities that are doing this in the US
are actually being recognised by a national awards program
run by the League of American Bicyclists,
everything from installing bike racks
to putting bike education programs in place
through their sport and rec programs.
And you have programs like TravelSmart here,
they need to become universal, and while we're at it,
let's go ahead and put bike racks on the fronts of the buses.
It is not an extraordinary expense and the communities that have done it
are seeing good success with that.
And I'd love to be able to put the bike on the train, too, while I'm at it,
that's what my wife and I were able to do
because we were riding at off-peak hour,
but wouldn't it be great to build the capacity to do it at peak hour?
And if I can't, at least give me sufficient parking.
We create this kind of parking at railway stations,
that's the one in Fremantle,
but I'd like a lot more of this kind of parking at the station.
And we have to have carrots and sticks. Don't just make parking a car easy,
let's make parking a bicycle easy.
And indeed, down in Fremantle, they're talking about the parking myth,
that there's not enough parking.
I say, "There's plenty. Plenty for the bicycle.
It's just cars take up a lot of space." Let's think about it that way.
Safe routes to school, there's a specific category
of transportation demand management encouraging more kids to walk and bike,
and I think it's a high priority.
One of the examples would be what we call walking school buses,
the idea of a designated route to school that an adult walks,
picking kids up along the way, very effective.
And last but not least, if you're gonna do this, you need some cover.
I call it the political cover program.
I think you need to have people show up at a public hearing
that actually commend you, stand up during public testimony and say,
"Yes. Please. Do it. Please fund that trail. Yes. Make room for the pathway."
Cos it's really hard as an elected official
if everybody is arguing against it. I call it the easy program.
We need to educate and anticipate the arguments against this work.
We need to simplify the messages, hence the three numbers, 30, 45, 1.5 billion.
We need to infiltrate, get on boards,
as you are all serving publicly, and as I have done.
Because I don't really think this is about the money.
It isn't. It is not that this stuff costs more.
This is about changing policy
so we have the capacity to do it this way all the time.
Change the rules. Change the ordinances. Change common practice.
That's how it's happening in communities around the country.
There are millions of reasons to do this, from air quality
to public health to our dependence on oil.
But this young lady tells you the real story right here.
I met her in Indiana.
There was a bike trail with a new bridge, I took a picture.
I said, "Can I get your photo on the bridge?" She goes, "Sure."
I said, "How do you like the new bridge they've put in on the cycle route here?"
She goes, "It's great. Actually, it's kind of a lifesaver."
I said, "A lifesaver? That's pretty strong."
She said, "Well, we're going through a tough time right now, my family.
My daughter Sarah is being treated for a form of childhood leukaemia,
she has to take immuno-suppressant drugs,
drugs that suppress her immune system."
She said, "She shouldn't be playing with other kids right now
because of the risk of catching a cold or something,
but I can take her on the bike because it's safe,
and because we have the trails, I ride with her often.
We can't go on the busy roads, but on the trails, I ride, we go to the park,
she sees other kids, she doesn't feel like a baby in a bubble."
I thought, "Wow! That's pretty heavy." Right?
She said, "But as a parent, going through this stress with my kids,
what could be worse? The bridge has made all the difference
because we can get downtown to the community centre,
all of that, rec and leisure."
And I said, "Wow!" And then I thought about it and I thought,
it's not just for Sarah. It's for the elderly shut-in
who can't drive anymore and might be able to walk to the chemist now
because there is a path and she can't walk on the busy road.
Or for the kid who has a single parent who's trying to work two jobs
who can now walk to the soccer pitch and have some fun with his friends,
whereas before, Mum said when she got him from school,
"You get inside and lock the door,
because the roads are too busy, I don't want you trying to walk out there."
That's who little Sarah represents.
That's who you're doing it for.
When it sounds like it's gonna cost a little bit too much,
remind yourself who needs it.
I know I sound like a raving lunatic.
You are unbelievably gracious to give me your time.
I know I've gone a bit over. You are kind, you are thoughtful.
You are generous to be public servants. I mean it greatly.
And honestly, I don't wanna sound unkind,
but I'm not doing this for any of you. Right?
You're nice people, I can tell. But that's not who I care about really.
Who are we doing it for?
My kids and their generation.
They are now 13 and 15, but I have frozen them in time at three and five
because they're great at three and five,
no, to remind myself they are part of the first generation in the US
that is likely to end up with statistically shorter life expectancies
than their parents. Are you ready for that?
Canadian data says the same with the Canadian youth population.
The only question is, are you guys on the cusp of that, as well?
We can do better. As public servants we must.
I can't thank you enough.
Minister Waldron, thank you for your leadership on this stuff.
Thanks to you guys for the physical activity task force,
it's a model I'm gonna share with other communities around the world.
I get to do this. I'm gonna tell them what you're doing in Western Australia.
Don't make me a liar!
Keep up the great work. Go to the next level.
It is a pleasure and a privilege. Thank you guys so much.
- (APPLAUSE)