Bankstown, Australia
Complete Streets
Overcoming the auto-city.
For this project, Greg Meckstroth initially led the design resolution and delivery team whilst at Hatch | RobertsDay. Meck Studio has since been engaged to provide design advice on detailed street design and implementation.
As Bankstown faces anticipated transformation with a new high frequency Metro train service, a key challenge will be to celebrate its great identity while accommodating more people, jobs and homes. The Complete Streets plan unifies these opportunities and resolves constraints to guide a 20-year investment of public works.
Evidence-Based Planning & Design Process
‘Business as usual’ threatens Bankstown’s opportunity to become one of Sydney’s preeminent destinations with increased jobs closer to home. By 2036, all streets could become congested, resulting in a polluted, ineffective network. A Complete Streets approach allows future congestion to be managed and sustainable modes prioritised. To convince decision makers, the project team collected traffic counts, video, travel time survey data and pedestrian and cycle user behaviour counts. The team utilised clever graphic and video communication techniques to convey opportunities and design outcomes.
The Future is Walking
A key component of Complete Streets is re-balancing the design of the street for all users and prioritising pedestrians, cyclists and transport users.
Complete Kerbs and Intersections
In modern city centres the demand for kerb space has dramatically increased in recent years, meaning its design and future flexibility is critical. Intersection design is just as important. The Complete Streets plan adopted shared kerb strategies and radii to slow the speed of turning vehicles, provide more space for pedestrians and reduce the width of crossings.
Connecting Cultural Destinations
Embedded in the Master Plan is a ‘cultural trail’ that links cultural destinations in the CBD. The trail includes markers and wayfinding tools to help users and visitors find their way around the city.
Smarter Design Standards
The plan adopted minimum width standards for street lanes which has the effect of slowing traffic speeds and created surplus space that has been converted to wider paths, landscape zones and narrower crossings. Through smart, equitable design standards, the project team added new pedestrian spaces, plazas, cycle tracks and shared streets by shifting only 2.7% of existing street space to an alternate mode and found bus time savings of 20% along simplified routes.
Before (left) and Typical Improvement After (right)
Before (left) and Typical Improvement After (right)
Location
Sydney, NSW, Aus
Scale
Large
Client
City of Canterbury Bankstown
Collaborators
Hatch | RobertsDay, TDEP Landscape, GTA Traffic