This is ominous. The file on cycling (in our new-age paper-clipping library) can be found on the compactus arm with the heading “”A.C.T. ADMINISTRATION to CREMATORIUM”.
This week the Minister for Urban Services announced that $520,000 would be spent on cyclepaths. Fine. But let’s not repeat past mistakes.
I suspect that the people in charge of cyclepaths do not actually cycle. They couldn’t. Cyclepaths in Canberra must be designed by motorists, for the motorists.
No sane traffic engineer could possibly have got on to a bicycle and negotiated, for example, the concrete chicane in the median strip on the loop road that leads from Wentworth Avenue to King Avenue Bridge. Traffic zooms in both directions around the spaghetti loop to and from the bridge. The main around-the-lake bicycle path crosses this loop with the dreaded chicane in the median strip.
Ah, ah, says the engineer, who has never ridden a bicycle since he was eight, I’ll make it safe. I will build a great big concrete chicane in the median strip so that cyclists will have to weave left and then right so they will have to see if there are any cars coming in either direction.
Moron.
Cyclists are so intent with eyes downcast in navigating the concrete chicane that they cannot possibly look at cars.
So, too, with the steel rails at intersections with roads. When the cycle paths were first constructed in Canberra, every road intersection had a steel bar chicane. Some remain like the one in Schlich St, Yarralumla. To get through the chicane a cyclist has to turn left and then right before crossing. The motorist who designed them thought it would force cyclists to look left and then right. Wrong. Cyclists look down to ensure they do not become entangled in the gratuitous bars.
Without chicanes of concrete and steel cyclists can easily look left and right times before crossing the road. The chicanes — designed by motorist engineers make it less safe, not more safe.
Fancy constructing bars and concrete chicanes at great coast with the aim of making things safer but in fact making them less safe, indeed positively hazardous.
Urban Services should spend their $520,000 cutting away the “”safety” constructions of past years to make cycle ways safer.
The message from cyclists to road engineers is simple: “”Don’t bother trying to engineer safety. We all know that cars are dangerous and drivers mad. Just give us good surfaces and we’ll dodge the maniacs behind the wheel. Just do the surfaces: ramps on gutters, obliquely angled paths at intersections and so on. Then pick random A and B spots in Canberra and cycle between them. See if it is possible without hitting dirt, grass, gutters and dangerous road crossing.
Spend the whole $520,000 putting officers of Urban Services on bicycles riding around Canberra for a few months.
Then get them to talk to their federal colleagues who have conspired with the motorist ministers who proposed the new road rules that come into force this year which pose a grave threat to cyclists’ safety.
They demand cyclists turn right from the far left of the road. They demand cycles give way to cars behind them on roundabouts. They demand cyclists dismount at pedestrian crossings. These rules are designed for the convenience and exculpation of motorists.
Motorists should have to give way to all traffic on pedestrian crossings and treat cyclists on the road just like other cars. It is easy for them. They are sitting in comfort. A few extra seconds means nothing to them, if it did, surely we would see motorists running madly to their cars a parking lots because time is so precious. But we don’t. They walk sanely and some drive madly. If only it were the other way around.