Great street design helps create great places to live, work and play but wholescale upgrades have long timeframes and are expensive. Sometimes communities may want to test a change to a street, or make iterative improvements, before committing to a major investment.

The NZ Transport Agency wants to support towns and cities to be able to make changes more quickly and cost effectively, using innovative and effective techniques to reduce vehicle speeds and create more space for people. This technique of employing fast tactical changes is proven in other countries and has the potential to deliver significant safety benefits in a short time frame.

Our new ‘Innovating Streets for People’ work stream examines the ‘how-to’ of innovating our streets to help us deliver on the GPS objectives by making streets safer and more ‘liveable’ through social, economic and environmental outcomes.

We will be improving the support we offer to councils and practitioners involved in street innovation with new guidance and helpful information and advice.

A support package will make it easier for people to deliver:

• temporary physical changes to streets
• improvements that are in advance of a permanent fix
• improvements with a primary aim to impact safety and deliver on community ‘placemaking’ aspirations

We aim to have interim written guidance to support ‘Innovating Streets for People’ by the end of June along with workshops for the sector. Final guidance, which will include case studies, is expected to be completed by the end of December.

If you want to know more, please contact Kathryn King at Kathryn.king@nzta.govt.nz