Dr Matthew BURKE (Research fellowship)

Griffith University, Australia
Exchange to Tongji University, China

My Endeavour Australia Cheung Kong Research Fellowships took me to Tongji University in Shanghai, one of the best universities in perhaps the most vibrant and interesting city in the world at present. Indeed, for a transport researcher like me, Shanghai is nirvana! It has magnetic levitating trains from the airport that reach 430km/h. There’s the world's largest metro system, which is easier to navigate than New York's and cleaner than London’s. They have emissions-free buses powered by giant electronic superconductors, which are a technical marvel. There are more bike lanes than about any city on earth. Their high-speed rail network radiates out of Shanghai in almost every direction. And they have just built a 32km bridge to the world's biggest container port. Amazing!

The grant allowed me to be immersed in the work of Prof Pan Haixiao’s Transport Research Lab in late 2011. Prof Pan is the leading Chinese scholar in transport and land use planning. We explored children's travel in the Chinese urban context, looking at the changing form of new suburban developments, the rise of China's excessive car culture and how this is affecting Chinese children. After many day’s observations and studies I fear for their children, just as much as I fear for our own Australian children. They are losing their independence and mobility due to parental fears of ‘stranger danger’ and traffic danger, both real and imagined, which are exacerbated in China due to the one-child policy. More and more children are being driven everywhere, which will have impacts on their health. How to turn this around is a major problem, though Shanghai has found some of the solutions by repressing car ownership.

With others in the team I also looked at the public bicycle hire schemes now operating in China, which are much more popular than Brisbane and Melbourne’s. And I participated in conferences on low-carbon transport and on transport planning for Chinese cities, including meeting the Chief Engineer of Hangzhou. In a unique turn of events, Prof Pan and I both returned briefly to Brisbane in September to present at the Asia Pacific Cycling Congress, where he was a keynote speaker. So he got to see my city as well, and was impressed by our busways and CityCat ferries.

In my time in China I ate truly great food (and only once got sick), visited ancient canal towns, visited their version of the Gold Coast (vulgar architecture knows no cultural boundaries), watched the sun set on the Bund numerous times, got interviewed by local Chinese television, and even found time to get my heart broken by a Shanghai girl. It was five of the best months of my life.

I’ve written up quite a few things that should appear in academic journals in the near future, but I’ve also written about what Shanghai can teach us in Australia. A good example is an article I wrote for The Conversation, an academic blogsite on ‘Effortless Cycling’ [https://theconversation.edu.au/effortless-cycling-how-do-we-make-riding-a-bike-normal-3670] which reflects on their bicycle culture and policy settings.

I also spent hours holed up in my office at Tongji writing grants for transport projects, seeking to leverage further value from the Fellowship. I am currently asking for half a million dollars on one of these grants, for a four year project, which we'll hopefully (fingers crossed) win later this year.

On my return I got promoted to Senior Research Fellow (in no small part due to winning this Fellowship) and my work continues afresh, with my team currently surveying children in Ipswich about their travel as part of one of my projects. I’ll be welcoming a visitor from China to my research group later this year on a different grant, and I’m working on getting one of the PhD students from Tongji out to Australia in the near future.

So thank you to the team at the Cheung Kong Group for investing in this great scheme. I am forever in your debt! And I encourage anyone with a good idea and the wherewithal to apply and see if they can’t have just as a rewarding time themselves on a similar Fellowship. Xie Xie (thankyou)!

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