Designing local parks for exercise

Being a keen jogger, the first thing I noticed about city living was the abundance of parks in my area (Box Hill South) designed for use by cyclists, walkers and joggers. With the amount of focus placed on healthy active lifestyles, their should become an even greater emphasis in new parks with emphasis placed on compelling and safe environments for exercise. Although Gardener's Creek Trail is a terrific example I think there is improvements that could be made to make exercising easier for the public

Increased safety

Numerous times with earphones on during my jogs, I've had near misses with traffic while crossing from one portion of a track to another. While traffic lights often help, who wants to sit and wait for a green man to flash for 5 minutes, breaking up a potentially fulfilling jog. On smaller roads I believe the use of pedestrian crossings is undervalued and when properly implemented offers a safe crossing of the road.

Another possible improvement is lighting. Running at night is often a scary experience. Solar lights offer a high straight up cost but little to no ongoing cost. Implementation of these could make exercise more available to those who work during the daylight hours and also combat drunken loitering in parks.

Greater signage.
Knowing how far you jog and then being able to work out how far and fast you have completed that is a great motivation for exercise and one that I used both in Gippsland and along Gardiner's Creek Trail. Few tracks implement distance signs though.


More taps and public toilets
The distance of Gardiner's Creek Trail I run (Station st to Elgar Rd) has no taps or public toilets and neither does the following portion leading to Camberwell. Without a source of water and no public toilets people (and their animals) are less likely to go for a walk or run. A diagram Ive produced (See below) has taps approximately a kilometer apart and public toilets along each stretch between major roads. Toilets are represented my the red dot and drink dots the smaller yellow dots, the black line represents the length of Gardiner's creek trail between Station st and Elgar rd. Personally Gardiners Creek Trail would be much more compelling with drink taps scattered along making it easier to go for a longer jog

Greater path maintenance
Sprained ankles are a constant hurdle while running on most paths. Damage from water, dogs and constant use has created paths with many pot holes dangerous for running, walking and buckled wheels. Greater maintenance of these paths would be a great asset and may convince people to use gravel paths through many of Melbournes parks, instead of running on concreted sidepaths

Perhaps future suburbs should look at Lake Guthridge and Guyatt in my hometown of Sale (See image below) which have both been transformed from original storm water catchments to extremely succesful walking/cycling/running  tracks.These lakes hit two birds with one by answering the public desire for exercise paths and also the need for storm water catchment. They also offer a useful home to wildlife. Both lakes are well serviced by drinking taps and public toilets.