Browsing by Author "Opit S"

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    Challenging the inequities of ebike access: An investigation of a community-led intervention in a lower-income neighbourhood in Aotearoa - New Zealand
    (Elsevier B.V., 2024-09) Witten K; Opit S; Mackie H; Raja A
    Introduction Ebiking offers positive physical and mental health benefits for riders. However, inequitable access to bike share schemes and purchase cost barriers limit ebike availability and uptake in lower-income communities. Furthermore, as bike culture differs from place to place, incentive schemes responsive to the local culture are needed to improve access to ebikes as a healthy mobility choice. Methods Three trials of ebike access were co-designed sequentially between 2021 and 2023. Give-it-a go, Ebikes in daily life, Pathway to Permanence were all designed by a community bike organisation working in tandem with a research team. Trial delivery was community-led. Trial participants’ experiences of ebike use were gathered through group and individual interviews, and the research also included a brief before and after survey of trip destination and mode use. Results Trial participants valued their ebiking experience, including the skills training and group rides, new knowledge of safe routes, health benefits of exercise, and fuel savings. During the trial, a third of weekly trips were made by ebike, while trips made by motor vehicle reduced by 25%. Cost emerged as a substantial barrier to ebike ownership. Conclusions Effective models to support ebike uptake in lower-income communities will be characterised by: adequate funding of community organisations to grow local bike culture; safe and secure bike infrastructure; community ownership of an ebike fleet to support skill acquisition and social connection; and a pathway to low-cost ebike access.
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    Summary report: Developing community: Following the Waimahia Inlet affordable housing initiative
    (Building Better Homes, Towns, and Cities (BBHTC) National Science Challenge, 2019-01-01) Witten K; Opit S; Ferguson E; Kearns R
    This brief report summarises findings of a longitudinal case study of the Waimahia Inlet housing development. A more detailed analysis can be found in Witten, Opit, Fergusson and Kearns (2018). Waimahia Inlet is an affordable housing development located in Weymouth on an estuary of the Manukau Harbour, 23 km south of the Auckland CBD and 5km southwest of Manukau City centre. It was developed by Tāmaki Makaurau Community Housing Limited (TMCHL), an incorporated body comprising the Tāmaki Collective, Te Tumu Kāinga, Community of Refuge Trust (CORT) and the New Zealand Housing Foundation. This consortium of Māori organisations and community housing providers (CHPs) shared a mission to provide affordable, good-quality housing, with a focus on meeting the housing needs of Maori and Pasifika families. Waimahia is an interesting case study of affordable housing provision for a number of reasons: • its 295 dwellings make it Aotearoa’s largest third sector housing development; • the complementary expertise of the consortium partners enabled an innovative organisational structure to be developed to finance and deliver the development; • it is a mixed tenure neighbourhood with 70% of homes either assisted home-ownership (shared equity and rent-to-buy/home saver) or retained by the community housing providers as affordable rentals; and • 50 % of households are Māori and 15% Pasifika.
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    Unlocking Transport Innovation: A Sociotechnical Perspective of the Logics of Transport Planning Decision-Making within the Trial of a New Type of Pedestrian Crossing
    (Building Better Homes, Towns, and Cities (BBHTC) National Science Challenge, 2018-06-01) Opit S; Witten K
    This paper considers the proposal to install a novel type of pedestrian crossing, as part of a neighbourhood intervention, to investigate the architecture of decision-making that influences the delivery and outcomes of our urban environments. While political and policy-making directions often signal a movement towards providing better active transport options and safer urban environments for pedestrians and cyclists, delivering projects that achieve such goals can prove challenging, time-consuming and be marred by conflict. Innovative projects can stagnate, diminish in scale or fail to be realised entirely. The exact causes of these less than ideal outcomes are difficult to determine as they involve a complex sociotechnical assemblage of various actors, institutions, resources and logics. The architecture of decision-making that surrounds these projects is created through a myriad of de jure and de facto actors that, in concert, affect the material construction of neighbourhoods and shape our homes, towns and cities In Auckland, the regional Road Controlling Authority (RCA), ‘Auckland Transport’ (AT), dedicates a chapter in its ‘code of practice’ outlining its commitment to enabling innovative solutions where appropriate. Yet, as political demands for a modal shift towards active and public transport have gradually intensified, the organisation has sometimes struggled to adapt from ‘business-as-usual’ practices that prioritise goals associated with the private motor vehicle, such as road network capacity and flow efficiency (particularly, alleviating peak hour congestion problems).