fyi - another article in The Age's "Cycling the City" series.
😉
**********
The Age: Western-plains riders
http://www.theage.com.au/news/in-depth/westernplains-riders/2006/10/08/1160246013864.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
October 9, 2006
Residents of Melbourne's inner-western suburbs, such as Yarraville, Seddon or Newport, often brag about their proximity to the city. On a good day the commute takes about 10 minutes by road and travel time is only a few minutes more by public transport. For this reason, cycling gets a regular mention in real estate write-ups.
"Only six kilometres from the city - ride your bike to work," the advertisements say. But for the hundreds who take up the challenge daily, the cycling route is patchy, welldefined in some places and virtually non-existent in others. It includes shared paths, bicycle lanes painted on to the road, well-conceived dedicated bike lanes, and busy truck routes, including a daunting black spot where cyclists must dodge and weave across Docklands Highway.
To commute to work, residents south of the West Gate Bridge at Spotswood join a section of the Hobsons Bay Coastal Trail, an attractive shared path that winds its way north from Williamstown to the pink-pillared West Gate Memorial Park.
From the bridge, the route takes commuters via Yarraville's Hyde Street or Whitehall Street before they spill on to the wide white-concrete pleasantness of the Footscray Road bike path. From there it's a colourful but confusing jaunt through Docklands, to the city street of your choice.
Tom Lester is a Bicycle Victoria employee who rides his bike from his home in Yarraville to the office on Collins Street every day.
He bought a bike for the Great Victorian Bike Ride in 1986 and started riding to Monash University in Clayton. Twenty years later his custom-built touring bike is still his main means of transport.
"I think it gets me going in the mornings and it's an automatic, reflex thing now," he says. "Once you get in the habit of cycling to work, it's no big deal."
Each morning Lester joins the cycling fraternity on Yarraville's Hyde Street, negotiating his way through peak-hour traffic but avoiding the trucks on the parallel Whitehall Street. He takes his time crossing the road at the corner of Parker and Hyde streets, in front of the local primary school. He recently saw a cyclist get knocked down from behind there. The man was not seriously hurt, but it was enough to make the veteran cyclist wary. To top it off, people park their cars in the declared clearways, forcing riders to leave the bike lane and jostle for space with other vehicles. Invariably, he says, the same cars are parked in the same spots every morning. It is his pet hate.
Before Lester and other cyclists from Sunshine, Footscray, Maribyrnong and Kingsville converge on Footscray Road, there's a notorious black spot to negotiate: crossing Docklands Highway Road to the bike path on the other side. The president of the City of Maribyrnong bicycle users group MazzaBUG, Hector Burton, says the stretch between the West Gate Bridge and Footscray Road, including Shepherd's Bridge across the Maribyrnong River, must be improved. In low light, the bike path is almost indistinguishable from objects that cyclists could run into.
"The bridge itself is not particularly safe," Burton says in a MazzaBUG report. "Especially the path surface and the lamp posts, which are a non-visible shade of grey."
Bicycle Victoria general manager Harry Barber says commuter cycling routes in Melbourne's west are undeveloped and disjointed compared with other regions of the city. Paths such as the Hobsons Bay Coastal Trail were built for recreational cyclists rather than commuters.
"Those paths are symbolic of the early stuff but they're not up to the job now," Barber says. "Version one is no longer working. (Between Williamstown and Spotswood) there are bike lanes on the road, and in areas where there's a decent bike lane and an inadequate path, people often choose the road."
But the seaside bike path leading to the West Gate Bridge is quality infrastructure compared with the muddled cycling commuter route between the bridge and Footscray Road.
Barber says he hopes to put together a consortium to finance work in the area. Costs may equal the $1 million spent on Footscray Road's bike path in the 1990s. "In those days (the path) was huge, it was an aircraft carrier," Barber says.
Cyclists, including Tom Lester, cruise along the Footscray Road path at a safe distance from traffic, heads down, at speeds of up to 30 kilometres per hour. All wear helmets. Most wear neon safety vests, and there's a generous sprinkling of figure-hugging lycra bike shorts. The commuters, mostly middle-aged men, ride obediently towards Docklands, obeying bike-shaped traffic signals and courteously moving aside for fellow pedal-pushers.
"Riders are like water," Barber says. "You can't make them do something that they won't do, but if you set up a good system they will naturally flow within the system."
Most riders take about half an hour to get to the city, which is about the same as people allocate for a commute into the city by train, tram or car. But before they can get to work, the western commuters must travel through Docklands, Melbourne's bright new corner.
The area has attracted criticism from cyclists because of its confusing routes, and on any weekday morning many cyclists can be seen breaking several road rules, such as cycling across pedestrian crossings or cutting across street corners, whether by choice or mistake. VicRoads statistics show that 40 cyclists were killed and 1636 were seriously injured in crashes in the five years from 2000 to 2004. In the same period, one pedestrian was killed in a collision with a cyclist. But the statistics make no mention of how many cyclists have been injured by rock-throwing pedestrians, a rumoured danger in the Docklands precinct.
Still, avid cyclists believe the advantages of riding to work outweigh the risks and problems. A city secretary who has been riding to work in Lonsdale Street from Yarraville for five years, Liz Ingham is an enthusiastic advocate for commuter cycling.
"It really is a great way to get to work - fast, cost-free, gives you thinking time, gets you in touch with the seasons, no timetables, no waiting on the platforms, no being stuck in traffic.
The City of Maribyrnong's mayor, Janet Rice, another cycling advocate, is keen to promote the health and timemanagement benefits afforded by riding to work. "Most people spend at least an hour a day travelling to and from work. By riding a bike to work, this lost time can be used for exercise," she reasons. "It's an exercise session built into your day."
LINKS
www.mazzabug.org.au