Marlborough Walking and Cycling Strategy have identified their own road safety problem and their own solutions to address it. Projects must meet criteria set by NZTA. Regular meetings are held of the Road Safety Community Group Marlborough, which includes representatives from ACC, Public Health, Marlborough District Council, Transit, Police, NZTA, community groups, Councillors, and the Road Safety Co-ordinator. Opportunities for partnerships, projects, and funding are discussed at these meetings. It is important with any strategy to monitor its effectiveness and to assess whether or not the indicators are being met. The trends and indicators set out in this strategy have been established from known data about walking and cycling. Marlborough District Council undertakes an annual ratepayer survey. Monitoring of indicators will be included in this survey. Some potential types of monitoring activity are described in the following table. Possible Monitoring Activities Data Set Comments Census journey to work (Statistics New Good long-term data series of trends for walking and cycle commuting (“main means of Zealand) travel to work”) but does not capture school or recreational traffic. Disadvantages are that the data are collected only once every five years, and may be weather-dependant on any particular Census day. Collision statistics (NZTA) Walking and cycling collisions tend to be statistically rare events, and many crashes are not reported to the authorities. This means that potentially dangerous locations are unlikely to be identified by conventional “black spot” collision analysis, and also that locations with one collision (or more) may not be any more dangerous than other locations. Overall trends in walking and cycling crash numbers, however, are useful indicators of walking and cycling safety, and should be monitored routinely. Walking and cycling infrastructure An inventory should be established and maintained of public walking and cycling facilities, including footpaths, cycle lanes (on-street), cycle paths (off-street, usually available to walkers and possibly horse traffic), wide shoulders on rural roads marked as cycle routes and bicycle parking facilities. A component of this inventory should be walking and cycle network plans. Funding and staffing Funding and staff resources will be needed to develop, implement and maintain the walking and cycling strategy. Tracking these items will demonstrate Marlborough’s commitment to walking and cycling. Automatic traffic counts Routine classified traffic counts identify the proportion of traffic of each vehicular mode (including cars and many different classes of truck and bus). With little extra effort or cost, traffic counters can count bicycle traffic too. No data have been collected yet in Marlborough, but routine counts will collect bicycle traffic in a sample of future automatic traffic counts. Manual traffic counts Manual surveys are needed to count walkers and help distinguish between school and other types of cyclists. They tend to be more expensive than automatic counts and consequently may be carried out less frequently and for shorter intervals. Special walker and bicycle counts Some data may need to be collected for special locations as necessary. School cycle stand surveys Cycling to school gives an indication of the use of cycles by younger residents of the community. If this number declines then future numbers of cyclists may decline. Cycle stand surveys do not quantify walking trips so student surveys are preferable. Bicycle tourism Numbers of visitor nights of cyclists on organised cycle tours in the district. Walking and cycling events Number of walking and cycling events held in the District such as Bike Week promotion, fun rides, road or off-road races. Opinion surveys of walkers, cyclists Attitudes of existing walkers and cyclists toward walking and cycling facilities can be documented. Opinion survey of residents Attitudes toward walking and cycling in general can be documented to ascertain what would be needed to encourage people to walk and cycle more. xxii