Moving around Perth.

I just returned from Perth where I attended the AITPM 2013 national conference. While I spent most of my days there attending the conference, I had a day and a half to visit the city centre, the beach and Fremantle.

Perth is a magnificent city that supports a high quality of life for its residents. Perth was ranked as the 9th most  liveable city in the world at the Economist Intelligence Unit's latest livability ranking. This ranking assesses living conditions in 140 cities around the world for 30 indicators across five broad categories: stability; healthcare; culture and environment; education; and infrastructure.Perth is the 4th Australian city in this ranking bellow Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney and above Brisbane.

Focusing on mobility management, Perth ticked all the right boxes in terms of public transport, street calming and livable streets. I really liked the traffic calmed streets in the CBD, around the main pedestrian streets (or malls as they are called in Australia). The use of pavers for the surface of pedestrian crossings creates a pedestrian friendly street environment.

In Fremantle this idea goes a step further. Pedestrian streets and traffic calmed streets with street furniture and landscaping along with well preserved heritage buildings create an atmosphere that goes beyond a typical port town and place Fremantle at the top of Perth attractions and places worth visiting. On a Saturday with the market open and everyone enjoying a coffee or a beer under the sun, you feel so relaxed that you start thinking that Perth is definitely a place worth considering moving to.

 Street artists painting in the street or playing music enhance this atmosphere.

  

 

Unfortunately as a typical Australian city there is a lot of work to be done when it comes to cycling and cycling infrastructure. Perth has very low percentage of people cycling to work at 1.3 %. The percentage of people using public transport for their every day trip to work is much higher at 12.7 % lower than Brisbane but on a upward trend which is expected to further rise in the near future thanks to the new free for all CAT (central area transport service) bus lines. Perth operates a Free Transit Zone ( FTZ ) where within the Perth city centre travel on public transport is free. 

To travel within this zone you can simply hop on any train, bus or CAT. You are not restricted to the amount of times you can use this service and no tickets are required. The FTZ includes City West and Claisebrook on the Fremantle, Midland and Armadale train lines, the start and finish of the FTZ are clearly marked, on the train stations and bus stops.

My tour around Perth ended at City Beach where looking at the sunset over the Indian Ocean on a clear and warm winter day I thought that won't be long before the day that I will return there to explore further this wonderful part of the world.