Walking Access: Walking from town to town
Recently the BBC asked its readers if they would know how to walk from Leeds to Manchester. “We live in a time when our phones will show us the quickest route to almost anywhere - if we are driving, that is. Walking? Well, that’s a different matter,” it noted.
Part of the British government’s official transport advice amid the COVID-19 pandemic has been “walk, if you can”. It helps down both infection and congestion and it improves people’s health.
However, as the BBC notes “once you venture away from your local neighbourhood, it is not always obvious how to find the best walking route to a nearby village or - if you are feeling adventurous - a neighbouring town or city.”
Britain is littered with walking paths – many well-known but others are not so straight forward. It is now mapping all those walks and showing the network that allows modern-day walkers to get from place to place avoiding roads.
New Zealand has many small towns that were previously a day’s walk apart and are now 20 minutes’ drive apart. Geraldine, for instance, has many beautiful tracks in around its township, but no obvious walking path for people to get in or out of the town. Maybe a kayaker could find their way to Temuka along the Waihī River. For most, though, the way in and out of town is along the state highway.
In many instances around New Zealand, the paths used to exist. You can see remnants of the paths our ancestors cut. In some cases, the paths exist in theory but not reality, such as unformed legal roads that we have not built. There are several of these near the Orari River as it passes close to Geraldine.
On the other hand, the towns of Clyde and Alexandra are connected. They are linked by the stunningly beautiful Millenium Track along the Clutha River. Residents and tourists can easily commute between the two towns.
And, further north, a cycle path connects the towns of Paekākāriki and Raumati South through Queen Elizabeth Park. School students use the path every day to get to Kāpiti College from Paekākāriki. From there a shared path continues on from Raumati South to Peka Peka. When the next stage of the expressway is complete, it will continue from Peka Peka all the way up to Ōtaki. That is a total distance of 34km connecting eight towns and villages.
The Walking Access Commission’s online mapping system records all these formed walking tracks and trails as well as unformed legal roads, esplanade strips along the sides of rivers and lakes, and other public access. There is a lot of public access that New Zealanders are not aware of.
But there is still not enough that we could follow the British government’s lead and encourage people to walk or cycle where they can.
We will have good public outdoor access when people have the choice to move by foot and bike around the country safely, off major highways.
It is not realistic for most people to travel between towns on foot or bike. In big towns and cities, it is often not even realistic to travel across suburbs to buy groceries and return home within the day.
But this manner of travel - by foot - should be a realistic choice for people if they choose it. To make it happen we need more than individual walking tracks. We need to develop networks of trails that link communities together.
We are doing that work around New Zealand in places like Taranaki, Pākari and North Waikato.
The best way we can do that is getting involved with and supporting our local trail groups. These groups do the demanding work creating and maintaining trails. But they also create the architectural framework that turns our dreams of a network of trails into reality.
By Stephen Day