Strategic Planning for Active Transport

Murdoch University's new Strategic Plan 2023- 2030 (Ngala Kwop Biddi) which was released on 13 Dec 2022, provides high level direction and leadership to achieve net carbon neutrality by 2030. One of the goals specified that will be of interest to the YM community is under the Strategic Theme of Sustainability that states: 'Develop and implement a university transport and commuting plan to move all transport and communting associated with the University toward net zero'. Our Travel Plan (2020) will move front and centre as the guiding document to guide this transition. The gauntlet has been thrown down!

A 2018 postcode search of MU staff revealed that a significant proportion of our people live within a 10km radius of the Perth campus. Of course we know that the 10km radius from a destination is the perfect distance to target behaviour change to shift people toward using public transport, walking, carpooling or cycling instead of driving. The Travel Plan identifies a range of actions that, when implemented, should help us to achieve a mode share change from 63% 'car as driver' to 45% among staff, and 40% to 30% among students; 21%'public transport' to 33% among staff and 47% to 54% among students, and proportional increases for active transport modes.The data needs to be crunched to see how those mode shifts will contribute to our Net Zero goal, and there are likely to be a range of interesting scenarios to be tested regarding the changing nature of how students and staff actually use the campus.

However, we head into 2023 with a strategic driver to implement and activate the targets in our Transport Plan and make significant contributions toward reducing our Scope 3 emissions from commuting.

See https://www.murdoch.edu.au/explore/our-strategy/ for more information on Murdoch Uni's future directions.