Missing Links Footpath Construction Strategy

Footpaths play an important role within the Swan Hill Rural City Council, providing a means of access to community facilities, services, public transport and open spaces. The provision of footpaths make communities more liveable and better connected and people healthier and more physically active.

Many areas in the Swan Hill Rural City Council are well suited to walking. Areas close to the Murray River provide ideal locations for pedestrian and cycle paths. Providing access to those areas is one of the objectives behind this strategy.

There are a number of residential roads that present some difficulty in establishing constructed footpaths due to street trees and other infrastructure that restrict the width available for a footpath. In recognition of a desire to continue with the expansion of the footpath network and, where possible, to provide a footpath on at least one side of roads in the urban areas, a Missing Links Footpath Construction Strategy is developed.

The strategy focuses on the construction of footpaths to provide connectivity with other footpaths based on a hierarchy which predominately considers pedestrian needs associated with attractors such as shops, public transport nodes, proximity to aged care facilities, schools and childcare, playgrounds, places of worship, road hierarchy (the scheme for categorising roads into groups based on a number of factors including; usage, location, surface type, capacity, etc) and other high demand community facilities.