The Government is assessing how the land areas of the former Belair Golf Course and Country Club in Belair National Park could be utilized.
We’ve participated in discussion forums on the topic, and anyone can now provide feedback via the survey, which takes about 5-7 minutes to complete.
We’re keen to see how the area could be used to improve walking trails and other trail users, and any viable commercial businesses that might improve people’s experience in visiting the national park.
We were concerned to hear about pedestrians being hit by a car in Hindley St and seriously injured this week.
Many ‘hit pedestrian’ vehicle crashes are completely avoidable or could be reduced in severity by slowing down vehicles to 30 km/h where there is high pedestrian activity. At a collision speed of 30km/h pedestrians have some chance of surviving a crash but this rapidly decreases with higher speed, with the majority killed if hit by a car at 50 km/h or above.
We support lower speed limits in Hindley Street and other areas in the Adelaide CBD where there is high pedestrian activity, to make the streets safer for those on foot.
In conjunction with the Heart Foundation we sent a letter to the Lord Mayor of the Adelaide City Council calling for lower speed limits in Hindley Street, which has high pedestrian activity.
Key extracts of the letter are below, or view the full letter.
A recent report on Pedestrian Casualty Crashes shows the majority of ‘hit pedestrian’ casualty crashes occurs in Adelaide city centre, where for the 5-year monitoring period there were 222 casualty crashes. This is followed by North Adelaide with 28 hit pedestrian casualty crashes. Around 26% of these casualty crashes were either serious or fatal.
Many of these crashes are completely avoidable or could be reduced in severity by slowing down vehicles to 30 km/h where there is high pedestrian activity. At a collision speed of 30 km/h pedestrians have some chance of surviving a crash but this rapidly decreases with higher speed, with the majority killed if hit by a car at 50 km/h or above.
We were concerned to hear about pedestrians being hit by a car in Hindley St and seriously injured this week. We believe that you are also concerned and would like to make the street safer for those on foot.
The Heart Foundation and Walking SA call for lower speed limits in Hindley Street and other areas in the CBD where there is high pedestrian activity.
We commend the City of Adelaide for the valuable work you are doing to improve the health, wellbeing and safety of your residents, visitors and workers. We were pleased to award City of Adelaide a Heart Foundation Local Government Award recognising your good work in 2016 and 2017. However, more needs to be done. Pedestrian deaths are not acceptable. We urge council to review the speed limits and continue to improve walking infrastructure.
Our 2018 Walking Awards presentation will be in October 2018. We accept nominations throughout the year. 2018’s award nominations deadline is 14 September 2018.
Many volunteers and others have contributed to South Australia’s great walking trails, walking clubs, and walking promotion and opportunities for health, wellbeing, recreation and tourism.
Our annual walking awards recognise sustained and outstanding contribution to walking at all levels throughout SA. If you know of someone who should be considered for an award please do consider nominating them.
Awards categories:
Criteria for awards will encompass:
Nominations
Nominations may be made by any South Australian nominators. Referees and nominees are not required to be members of Walking SA or of a walking club. We’ll also be pleased to consider self nominations.
For more information refer to walkingsa.org.au/awards.
Walking SA has been successful in receiving funding from the Office for Recreation and Sport for its Walktober 2018 initiative. This builds on the promotion and events we conducted throughout October 2017, including the key Trails Less Travelled event. We’ve got some great ideas to expand upon 2017’s initiatives to further meet our vision: to see more people walking more often.
We’re seeking to expand this year’s Walktober promotions by exploring potential opportunities with like-minded partners. We’d love to chat to organisations, walking groups and businesses to explore opportunities to collaborate in the fields of walking for health, leisure and transport, inclusive walking, and engaging with a diverse range of people from the community.
This is a significant opportunity for Walking SA’s members to promote walking in their club or organisation as well as reach out to the community at large to promote the vision of more people walking more often. Some ideas we’d like to explore:-
Please contact Walking SA to discuss opportunities as to how we might collaborate to promote walking in Walktober 2018.
Here at Walking SA we are focussed on improving our advocacy for walking and on behalf of the walking community of South Australia.
Over recent months we’ve been involved with:
Of ongoing significant concern is still the issue of shared paths. This is still causing significant alarm to us and our members and the walking community at large. We will continue to make presentation to state and local government to address ways to improve the situation for all trail users. If you have issues of concern and examples of problems please get in touch with us.
For people aged over 60, the benefits of walking at a fast pace increased
Walking at an average pace was associated with a 20 per cent risk reduction for all-cause mortality compared with walking at a slow pace, and walking at a fast pace was associated with a 24 per cent risk reduction.
For people aged over 60, the benefits increased: an average walking pace was associated with a 45 per cent reduction in cardiovascular disease risk, and fast or brisk walking, a 55 per cent reduction.
The study by Sydney University analysed more than 50,200 walkers. Their most valuable message is that you’ve got to huff and puff and step up the pace until you’re out of breath, because that will lead to improvements.
And another study in Canada has confirmed what many people already believed: Walking for older people, even less than the recommended guidelines and only at moderate speed, can add years to your life. The 13-year study followed 140,000 people with an average age of 70.
Experts have calculated some best practice guidelines for time spent walking weekly. It’s about 150 minutes of moderately intense activity, or about 30 minutes five times a week, with about half that — 75 minutes a week — as a minimum.
But the study has found that even if you’re not meeting the minimum, the act of walking is still extremely valuable.
“Even a little walking might help you live longer. It’s been called a perfect exercise, it’s easy, cheap, doesn’t require special equipment and it doesn’t even have to be fast walking. Most of the participants said they walked about four kilometres an hour.”
Congratulations to South Australian Recreation Trails (SARTI) on the opening of the final section of Lavender Federation Trail on May 5 at Clare, attended by a broad cross section of the walking and local community.
Some 21 years ago, back in 1997, a group of walkers realized the potential of a long distance walking trail on the eastern side of the Mt Lofty Ranges in South Australia. The attraction of a such a trail in this location was that it is in the “rain shadow” of the Mt Lofty Ranges thereby offering dry weather walking for much of the year.
The Lavender Federation Trail, now 325km long, beings on the Murray River in Murray Bridge and traverses diverse countryside on the eastern flanks of the Mt Lofty Ranges to Clare, connecting with almost 100km of link & loop trails to nearby towns, and attractions through the Barossa & Mid North of the State.
The unique feature of this trail? It has been designed, built and maintained entirely by volunteers, the eldest being 86. We understand it is the longest trail network in the country built entirely by volunteers.
The successful Hiking Expo event was on April 15th in Belair National Park. The day consisted of guided walks and 35 exhibitors promoting walking opportunities including trails, outdoor gear, walking clubs and walking groups and tours.
We had indications of upwards of 2,500 attending on the day but unfortunately with poor weather that weekend this was reduced to about 500.
The event was possible through the financial seed funding and many volunteers from our key event partners the Friends of the Heysen Trail, ARPA Bushwalkers and Heart Foundation Walking. Thanks to the financial generosity of member clubs and other revenue generation on the day we were able to break even financially.
Save next year’s date:
Sunday 14 April 2019, 9am to 1:30pm