Urban Services Minister Bill Wood is searching for “missing links” – not the ones that will prove the theory of evolution, but the “missing links” on the cycle-path network.
The idea is to find high-use paths (used by cyclists and pedestrians) that do not link up, so they can be given higher priority in the next capital works budget.
This is fine, but he should first ask how the paths were created with missing links in the first place. How can a planner or an engineer create a path that stops at a “missing link” and then resume some distance away? Why did they do that?
The answer is that the planners and engineers are motorists, not cyclists. The path system – like other systems – should have been designed from the user in, not from the creator out, if it is to be successful.
The designers need to get on the paths and cycle them, preferably accompanied by regular users.
I am not making some special plea for extra money and effort for cyclists. It is an appeal for a bit of intelligence in the spending of public money. If we are to have a system of cycle-pedestrian paths, let’s make it an excellent one; it does not cost very much more, maybe less.
At least Wood is urging path users to put their views. But the mentality of the designers has to be changed. Examples abound. They go beyond the missing links, and we need some intelligence beyond that of the missing link to fix them.
Metal bars. When the paths were first created, metal bars were erected at virtually every road crossing. The cyclist had to negotiate first left then right through parallel metal bars at 180 degrees to the path. The theory seemed that it would force the cyclist to look both ways for traffic. But the cyclist was too intent on negotiating the bars to worry about traffic. Moreover, in the time it took to negotiate the bars, new traffic would arrive.
Some of these bars remain. Some have been replaced by a metal bar in the middle of path running in the same direction as the path, thereby creating something for cyclists to run into, especially at night.
Road designers usually avoid this sort of design, recognising that, even if careful drivers can avoid obstacles, it is silly to put them in the road because they can be hit upon a moment’s inadvertence. These flaws are not avoided on cycle paths because road designers are usually motorists and not cyclists as well.
Cycle path designers, however, cannot be cyclists. Otherwise they simply would not put large cement bollard-like posts in the middle of paths or anywhere near the paths.
The fairly new path along Dairy Flat Road is a classic. The path goes over a few ditches. Where it does so, the designers have put cement posts at each the side of the path, narrowing the path at that point. Presumably, this is to stop cyclists from riding into the ditch. Instead, the cyclist is now more likely to run into a more dangerous cement pole. Worse, with the narrowing of the path at that very point, there is no room for two cyclists to pass or travel together – so one is more likely to go off the path and end in the very ditch that the design was aimed at protecting them from. Madness.
Cyclists do not need protection from themselves. Most have a well-developed sense of self-preservation, travelling as they do amid hostile motorists.
Get rid of all metal bars and cement bollards from the paths. Save the money.
Motorists need to be chicaned and controlled because they can do so much damage to innocent bystanders. The same logic does not apply to cyclists.
The crossing on the ramp to Kings Avenue is a shocker. It combines the cement-bollard lunacy with the metal-bar chicanery. Cyclists have to negotiate this obstacle in the median strip of a dual carriageway with fast moving traffic. Get rid of it; it is better to have nothing, so cyclists can concentrate on the traffic.
Wood’s new review is to concentrate on commuter paths. Fine. But the path around Lake Burley Griffin is just 5 per cent away from being a perfect tourist and recreational ride. It would not cost much to fix it.
The Boathouse Restaurant, the Hospice and the Museum – all very worthy – were built across existing paths without proper restoration. Kingston Foreshore is going the same way. And no sealed path goes through Jerrabomberra Wetlands. The path ends on both the northern and south approaches. Local cyclists know their way around all these obstacles. But tourists come to befuddling ends to the official path.
Australian Capital Tourism should rise to the task. It should get some people from out of town to cycle around the lake with them. They will quickly see what needs to be done.
The Burley Griffin recreational cycling circuit could then be plugged for what it should be: the best tourism cycling system of any capital in the world. Cycle hiring would boom. A simple map marking the path and the national attractions combined with some signs on the paths would give tourists the option of a different length journey according to which combination of the lake crossings they use: the bridges and or Scrivener Dam or Dairy Flat..
Ninety-five per cent of the work is done. But a tourist hiring a bike at Acton Ferry has little chance of negotiating our wonderful lake circuit.
These little, inexpensive changes can make a big difference. For example, the keep-left signs on the paths introduced recently have made a huge difference to the safety of cyclists and pedestrians. The previous lunacy of pedestrians walking on the right side into oncoming traffic has virtually disappeared. It is a shared path where both have rights to stay on the path, not a road on which pedestrians walk facing cars in the knowledge that they must leap completely off the road if a car comes their way.
On that point, many motorists would like cyclists to use the paths rather than the road wherever possible. Fine. But there are too few places where a cyclist can move from road to path without stopping and lifting the bike over a gutter.
So often, paths end smack into a gutter, or a cycle lane on the road ends with little warning and no escape via a gap in the gutter on to the adjacent path.
Finally, motorists who do not cycle: try to avoid the dog in the manger attitude about money spent on cycle paths. They are not the Alice-to-Darwin railway. They are comparatively cheap and have lots of benefits. Why can’t we aspire to having, and being proud of, the best cycle system in the world?