Industrial Area Travel Survey

Jillian Woolmer
City of Cockburn
45

I moved offices earlier this year to Bibra Lake Industrial Area and conducted a travel survey of all staff in my new workplace. There were no surprises to me that 94% of the nearly 100 staff members drive their car to work, as the car park is always full. I was surprised that despite the fact that the local area is a relatively hostile environment, there are a few people who do walk or ride to work. I was also surprised how far people drive to work as 60% live more than 10 km away and half of those more than 30km away. They are unable to use public transport due to their work hours and their work location.

I will work on improving the hostile environment by improving the paths in the area as much as I can. There are currently many missing paths. A staff shuttle bus comes past twice a day, but this is only useful to staff that work specific hours, not those that start early or finish late. There are no buses within 1 km and no linking paths. This is not unusual in industrial areas. It does created a TravelSmart black hole though and makes the challenge to get more people walking, riding and using public transport difficult in this area. Lucky I like a challenge. A quarter of those surveyed live within 5 km. I will do what I can to make it easier for those wanting to walk and ride in the area, by improving the existing paths, putting in grant applications to build additional paths and seeing if a tree or two can be added to improve their journey through this hostile area.

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Jillian

I am surveying staff from other buildings too so hope to be able to compare how people from the different sites travel to work.

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Kylie (Your Move)

Hi Jillian, Great to see that our handy survey has been so informative and that the results are helping you plan what to next. As you've noted making sure there is good infrastructure is crucial. Don't forget to check in with your staff that drive about what would help them to walk, cycle or use public transport? They might have some great ideas!

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Jillian

Thanks Kylie - yes staff do have some good ideas. I have followed up with some of them and we are looking at options so that we can change some of the trips. We carpool when we can for meetings and we are also having teleconferencing set up so we can reduce some car travel when we can. Flexible work times also mean we don't drive one in ten.

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