The final active travel workshop held in on 21 February 2023, brought to a close the final phase of the ‘Nudging Active Travel’ project in the North Region of Malta. This project was led by the Institute for Climate Change and Sustainable Development (ICCSD) in collaboration with the North Regional Council.
As part of the project, the ICCSD organised two active travel workshops in Naxxar and Imtarfa, where participants were invited to walk and cycle within these localities and discuss issues and challenges of active travel in the islands. In the first workshop, held in Naxxar, participants accessed an interactive participatory platform to comment on their walking experience and evaluate potential street experiment ideas.
This forms part of the PhD research being conducted by Karyn Scerri under the supervision of Prof. Maria Attard, which focuses on walking as a mode of transport for short-distance trips. This workshop also brought together different stakeholders, making for an interesting discussion on the current local political, economic and social barriers to active travel. The final workshop held in Imtarfa tackled some of the major challenges in designing walking and cycling routes, particularly for the North region of Malta.
This discussion, led by Ms Suzanne Maas, Mr Stephen Giuliano and Ms Karyn Scerri (all ICCSD researchers) highlighted key issues like one-way streets and contraflows for cyclists, the lack of infrastructure along rural roads and the hectic urban environments that characterise the North Region.
The Nudging Active Travel project aims to provide information about the benefits of walking and cycling, as well as educate people about distances and travel times and the under-rated benefits of active travel over driving, especially for short distances. This project stems from the work being undertaken by the Institute on active travel and focuses on the identification and mapping of a walking and cycling network, which started from the Eastern Region and has now extended to also include the North region localities.
The totems, which display useful information about walking and cycling distances and travel times are already implemented in several locations. The routes can be easily accessed by scanning the QR codes with a phone, or online through the ICCSD website whilst on the go.
