Neighbourhood accessibility planning projects aim to give safe access to all ages of pedestrians and cyclists in neighbourhood areas.
Neighbourhood accessibility plans involve a council co-ordinator working with various council teams, external agencies and members of the neighbourhood, to determine issues related to walking and cycling. A wide range of solutions, across a broad spectrum of disciplines are planned and implemented.
Neighbourhood accessibility planning projects follow a well-established process. The main principles of this process are that they:
- bring together key stakeholders to collaborate in addressing safety and access issues
- rely on community participation in risk identification, development of solutions, and implementation of solutions
- involve and engage all relevant local authority teams
- are data and risk analysis based
- develop and implement an integrated package of engineering/environmental improvements, enforcement, policy, encouragement and educational interventions that will address locally identified issues involve evaluation that ensures the measurement of all implementation outcomes.
The NZ Transport Agency funds territorial local authorities to undertake neighbourhood accessibility planning projects.