What's going on with Brisbane's inner city Cycle Lanes?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ส.ค. 2024
- During the COVID-19 Pandemic, cities around the world took the opportunity of empty streets and people abandoning public transport to rapidly roll out popup cycling infrastructure at scale.
While Brisbane neither went with a rapid roll out or scale, they did deliver the CityLink Cycleway in Brisbane city, providing temporary protected bike lanes on Elizabeth and Edward Streets on a 12 month trial basis with a view to making them permanent.
The trial was very successful, and so the decision was made to make them permanent. One of the great findings of the trial was that CBD businesses overstated how many customers arrived by car, and underestimated how many came by bike. And that has resulted in more desire for Brisbane City Council to not just make these ones permanent, but expand them into more areas. You can find details of the trial and outcomes here:
www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/traff...
So if the trial was so successful, and they're making it permanent, why have they fallen into such disrepair, and why is a key section of the cycleway being closed for up to 18 months?
That's what this video will look at.
0:00 Introduction
0:43 CityLink Closure for Brisbane Metro works
4:13 Tour de Detour
11:00 Poor state of CityLink surface
12:15 Summing up
Thanks for your support of my channel. If you really like what I do, coffee gives me energy. Feel free to buy me one:
www.buymeacoffee.com/CoxyCycling
That's a nice video you stay safe Chris. I think projects like that are universal where the local Government are involved. It's all the Red type as us Brits call it. That was a good interview you did on the Active Towns pod cast a while back. Keep up the good work the good thing about being on foot is you can communicate with each other more than you could in a car. Like you demonstrated all you had to do was to say excuse me and they side stepped you and nearly had full blown Conversation with you that's what I got from the Video.
The CityLink announcement seemed promising at first but once again Brisbane City Council is living in their own dream land. A year to do what many cities effectively did in a weekend, plus who knows how many more years to build it properly - or close to properly, because properly would involve closing another lane 🫠
The poor road surface is forgivable though, because it looks like many of the drains and other hazards have been moved out of the way. That's absolutely a win - or maybe it's the bare minimum, but a bit of a bumpy road is better than whatever obstacle course was going on before. Hopefully some resurfacing is on the way!
Imagine if BCC was a bit more progressive - create a separated bikeway on George St and have cyclists use Kirilpa bridge - a bit further but if they dedicate a lane it would be quicker
Yeah, the Schrinner Council is very resistant to extending bike lanes on George Street. Which is bizarre to me. There's already some at the Courts. Extending it to connect to CityLink, Queens Wharf and the Parliamentary Precinct seems like a no brainer.
But then, no brains...
the problem is the "end result" is always under construction. And we are ALWAYS being pushed out. Along the city, we've got:
1. Victoria Bridge closed
2. Closure of the CityLink near Casino.
3. 2x closures near the Riverwalk (detour)
4. "Mixed use" redesign of Howard Smith Wharves that slows riding
5. Casino construction along bikeway closing/slowing the bike way to 10 km/h
6. Closure near N. Quay and Turbot
Am I missing any?
And it's not like we have good detours, either. More bike paths seem to be under construction than 'completely open.'
Exactly. There's so much disruption in the city now, cycling in is more difficult than ever
Huh, I didn't realise the lights were synced up well in that direction on Edward Street. I don't usually go that way. I head into the CBD (from near UQ) at the moment via Eleanor Schonell & Goodwill, and in that direction the lights seem purposefully designed to be _impossible_ to get a clean run *ever.* It's absolutely infuriatingly bad design. I only do it because the alternative involves Elizabeth St, which is just as bad. On my outbound trip I hop on the road until I can turn off onto the Bicentennial at the bottom of Ann St. Knowing that at least the Edward St design has _some_ redeeming factor is a little nice, I guess.
I know you said in reply to my comment on your Short that this is the first thing Brisbane has tried, but...no it's not? We've had Annerley Rd and Stanley Street for years. Those are pretty bad (in terms of how narrow they are), but these are so much worse. It's pretty clear that the low-level details of the design of CityLink were _not_ done by someone with any experience on a bike. They were supposedly done "quickly as a trial", but they took a year from the start of the pandemic to actually get them in place, which is hardly quick. And while the permanent solution will probably end up being better in terms of the strength of the barriers and the smoothness of the path, I doubt it's going to end up being any wider at all, let alone an actual acceptable width (which I would characterise as, at the _bare minimum,_ a width that enables one cyclist to overtake another when there's an oncoming cyclist-3 cyclists wide. Ideally you'd be able to have 4 cyclists wide for overtaking in both directions-or better yet, unidirectional travel on each side of the road-but considering we can't even get the bare minimum that might be a stretch too far for this Council).
I'm honestly not at all worried about the width of City Link. These kinds of infrastructure aren't built for speed. If you have to pootle along behind someone for a bit, that's no big deal IMO. When I said they hadn't tried anything like this, I meant more that they tried something new without endless, painstaking, NIMBY-dominated consultation that inevitably undermines the entire project and makes it pretty crap (like the Gabba bikeway from the Annerley Road intersection to Ipswich Road...).
Instead of begging repeatedly for "permission" from the general public to repurpose some wasteful on street parking to provide bike lanes, Council went "we're gonna do it, we're gonna monitor it for 12 months, we're gonna tweak it as we go, and then we'll see what we do". That's great. And that's how we actually get infrastructure in the suburbs on roads IMO.
I see that yesterday Cr Murphy announced this kind of approach to providing bike lanes on Junction Road in Morningside - so basically, when the road resurfacing happens, they plonk in some barriers and a bike lane at the same time. If that approach is successful, and can be replicated across the city, that changes the game completely.
Thanks for updates! Looking forward to the end result, those finished photos look awesome
Your comment at 3:42 is exactly the same excuse my local highways depsrtment use here in the UK. They have refused to put signallised pedestrian crossings on a new busy roundabout refurb because 'it will interrupt traffic flow'. Stupid attitude and it seems the lives of pedestrians and cyclists are less important than traffic flow.
Nice video. When they close stuff around here, the whole area is shut off. A local bridge used solely by pedestrians and cyclists has been closed and removed since Jan 2022 due to a road upgrade. When they close roads around here to vehicles they apologise profusely and open them as soon as possible. Pedestrians and cyclists can just wait years for things to be reinstated.
That's it exactly. For all the platitudes about encouraging people to use bikes and walk, when it comes to it, my local council is entirely focused on motorists.
Looks very difficult there. Yet I live on O'ahu, Hawai'i and it is worse than that almost everywhere. I just slowly ride a human-powered kick scooter on the sidewalk now.
Yeah, no doubt there's worse places. It's frustrating though when they have invested in better but then they let it go to ruin.
In QLD bikes are allowed on Bus Lanes, but not on Bus-only Lanes? I'm not familiar with that particular corner.
That's my understanding yeah. Bus only means bus only.
Bus Lane means bikes can use it.
Look at those empty roads - why do we build and maintain them with taxpayer money if drivers don't use them???
I see what you did there ;-)
We get the same sort of treatment in London. If a detour exists at all it's usually either on a footpath or on the road with the traffic. Or at least that's how it has been for the last 10 years, but it's starting to change. Sometimes when there are road works we'll get a lane of the road sectioned off for us.
I think it's a volume thing. When there are enough cyclists to cause a problem (on the footpath or the road) if a proper detour is not provided, or when there are enough cyclists to make noise on social media and make local politicians sit up and take notice, that's when we start to get proper detours.
I'm doing my bit to try and wake up the sleeping giant of cyclists in the community. There's so many people who ride, but don't consider themselves "cyclists" and just accept the crap we get. Time to get loud. Especially with 2024 having Council and State elections.
It seems less annoying to ride down William St on the road, turn left into Elizabeth St and enter the bike lane at George St?
Yep. But getting across the Victoria Bridge is hopeless. Best to just avoid it until it's finished. But of course, for some people that will just mean they give up riding or scooting to the city at all. Hello induced car traffic...
18 months or 18 years lol BCC delays are laughable
Brisbane "metro" is a disgrace. The bus tunnels were built with the intention of converting to rail and the quirk council planned a rubber tyred metro like paris. Instead we get the lazy cheap and crap. No bikes on the "metro" is a right shame.
Yeah, I mean there's benefits in completing the busway tunnels through the CBD, converting Vic bridge to public and active transport only, and electrifying larger capacity buses. But like cross river rail, it's a lot of spend for marginal returns really
@@ChrisCoxCycling I happen to be a rail nerd. Cross river rail has its problems but it's a step forward Brisbane "metro" is a regression because it further entrenches bus use. Maybe I'm a radical but I think buses are a cop out. The respectable can drive and the poor can wait behind them in a bus.