Sydney's Cycle Lanes
Clover Moore’s attempt at alleviating congestion in the City of Sydney is fraught with obstacles such as…the city itself! Tall buildings, constant works and thin streets all contribute to the disaster that is the bike lanes of Sydney’s CBD.
For $70,000,000 you would think there would be a maze of paths raised slightly over the heads of the pedestrians branching off in four or five directions to get our city clean and fit. But alas no, the network that is under construction has dangerous obstacles, odd diversions, sharp turns, large blind corners, huge gaps in sections that even the most dare devilish cyclist avoid. The bike lanes in some places are combined with the bus lanes. That is an accident waiting to happen.
Don’t forget to add to this the expense of the engineering to make it ‘look serious’ like traffic lights with pictures of cycles, granite flooring and sandstone gutters.
If you are a motorist watch out, the streets are even more unsafe particularly if you have a large 4×4. You may have to jump the curb to turn some corners that should have cyclists on them. The lanes have removes some traffic lanes and parking places all together. Not to mention that choking traffic with confused drivers leads to another mess altogether – road rage!
For business people in these new areas, we have been told of the loss of business they are facing due to the fact that their regular customers can no longer park close enough to visit their stores any longer. Many of these business people ‘set-up-shop’ in these areas because of the passing trade and now there is no parking nearby so that people can drop in. You have to feel for all of them trying to continue their business with this massive impost. Also try standing around for an hour and see how many bikes actually go by…you will have enough fingers, certainly outside peak hour!
The bike paths are lovely to look at though. It seems no expense was spared, and the builders took great advantage of that. They have lavished some of the new paths with granite; you know the stuff that most of us can’t afford on our kitchen benches. But the removal of trees in the path of oncoming cyclists (at speed) has not happened, obviously green is better than safe. This is most noticeable on the exit off the Harbour Bridge down to King Street.
We mustn’t complain, the Lord Mayor had a lovely function to open this 200mtr stretch of path!
If this need to cycle up our city (which I am in great favour of) the city needs to employ someone who straps on the lycra each day and rides to work to get a better insight to the problem. At the moment it looks like my 9 year old took crayon to city map and handed it to ‘Aunty Clover’ and she thought – ‘what a great idea for a bike path.’
Just remember not to blame the 9 year old!!
In just about every other City where cycle ways have been tried, they have failed. In my opinion it is a total waste of taxpayers money and time will tell whether the next Lord Mayor rips them up and starts again.
Easing traffic congestion? What were they thinking?!?
Level 2, 9 Help Street