Dr. Sarah Rock:

I agree with everything Ms Cahill said. I would do small, practical things next. This comes back to what the Senator said about representation. One would be to recruit more diversity in the transport sector. There may not be as many female civil engineers or transport planners coming through the system but we can value interdisciplinary approaches. As an example of a multidisciplinary approach to design, Ms Fox is a landscape architect. We will then start to see much greater representation. It will bring on board the different voices from different backgrounds. We should be flexible with recruitment, allow part-time work and job-sharing in the public sector and continue online working, all of which would make a significant difference.

Active and sustainable travel funding needs to give greater recognition to the important of sense of place. Safety comes up as the biggest factor in how women choose to travel, especially if they have the means to choose other ways. An important factor is whether a place is attractive. It relates to urban design quality. Do women feel that other people are around and that if they get off the train at night, there will be shops beside them and people coming and going, or will they get off at a lonely station in a lonely place? Even if they survive their journey on the train at night, they might get off and be equally unsafe in that final mile. We need to recognise and value that sense of place. That can happen through more diverse recruitment.

The first thing I would do at a local level is to change our Sydney co-ordinated adaptive traffic system, SCATS. I would increase the amount of time for pedestrians to cross the road. We currently give six seconds, if people are really lucky, for them to get across most roads. After that, there is an amber flashing man that frightens the life out of every mother and child, and every other person who has to cross the road.