Don’t shout loudly for a new pathway

A strategy designed to prioritise paths and trails has been developed by Baw Baw Shire with the aim of providing fairness across the shire.

Rather than allocating funds to “whoever shouts the loudest,” the proposed strategy sets out prioritisation matrix criteria and categorises works for major towns, minor towns, villages, tourist towns and inter-town connections.

Council will now seek community feedback on the proposed strategic pathway networks.

Council officers recommended that prioritising projects should be influenced by data to ensure pathways provide the highest level of community benefit.

A report to council said this would allow council to move away from a prioritisation methodology where priorities were heavily influenced by individual footpath requests, even if the projects don’t have a significant benefit for the wider community

Officers said the strategy would provide a revised prioritisation methodology that would prioritise key primary and secondary routes

The report said the strategy also would address path needs in smaller towns, which previously remained near the bottom of priority listings due to lower population and other factors but were important for those towns.

“It is envisioned that the prioritisation tool will still be required to determine which of the strategic paths are delivered each year as part of council’s annual budget and capital works program.

“As primary and secondary pathway networks are identified, individual customer request for footpath connections will still be assessed through the prioritisation tool, however, may take lower priority when projects are selected for construction in favour of primary or secondary pathway network routes,” the report said.

Cr Danny Goss said roads and pathways were one of his priorities when he stood for council.

He said he was surprised to learn there was little planning put into how paths were chosen to be developed and sometimes it was just in response to a resident’s request.

“I am happy that this is very strategic and uses a prioritisation tool that has about 17 different elements to it. This is a great step forward,” he said.

Cr Michael Leaney said the most important aspect of this strategy was it removed the element of whoever shouted the loudest would get the most, which had been to the detriment of smaller towns.

“This strategy and matrix will address concerns and fairness throughout the community. This will enable us to support those smaller communities,” he said.

Cr Darren Wallace said this would let people decide where paths and trails should be located and hopefully would lead to paths and trails going in the direction people want them.

Cr Tricia Jones said this strategy ticked all the boxes and would benefit many towns.

The report to council said walking and cycling may be the only available transport for some people, so pathways needed to connect people to key public amenities.

The strategic pathway networks proposed for each locality was based around the existing road network and pathway routes located within the public road reserve.

Stage two of the strategy will identify strategic links within public reserves and parks, while stage three will identify inter-town links.

There are 17 major elements that constitute the scoring matrix that considers roadside environment, sight distance, traffic, road safety and parking, accessibility, community demand, environmental, land use, public amenities and facilities that would generate pedestrian activity, future development, social and economic factors and council plans and strategies.

Community engagement will be undertaken in January and February.