From the Brisbane Institute web site:
http://www.brisinst.org.au/resources/nightingale_john_activetransport.html
while much is being done in and around Brisbane to improve accessibility via the
car and public transport, John Nightingale asks what has happened to plans to
provide better infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists.
Amongst the many infrastructure projects that are being rushed into existence in
South East Queensland are a number that converge on that small area between the
Brisbane River at Dutton Park Cemetery and the South East Freeway. These include
the North South Bypass Tunnel, the Green Bridge, the Boggo Road Busway, Stages 1
and 2, and the Boggo Road Urban Village. The goal of all these projects is the
improvement of urban amenity and the development of transport oriented centres
to reduce congestion strains on the current road system, as well as greenhouse
gas emissions.
The Tunnel is supposed to reduce congestion on surface roads between
Wooloongabba and Bowen Hills. The Green Bridge should reduce the burden of
university bound traffic on the Riverside Expressway, Coronation Drive and Sir
Fred Schonell Drive. The Boggo Road Busway should improve access to the Green
Bridge, reducing pressure on Cornwall Street and Annerley Road, and raise
patronage on routes to the university with reduced travel times, thereby
increasing alternative traffic usage. Stage 1 of the Boggo Road Busway will
allow bus access from the South East Busway at O'Keefe Street to Annerley Road,
with stations at PA Hospital and Park Road Railway Station. Stage 2 will remove
buses from Annerley Road, allowing bus-only routes to connect to the Green
Bridge. Boggo Road Urban Village will provide jobs and upmarket flats for
hundreds of new workers and residents, convenient to bus and train services.
But what is being done for those who do not need either bus or train to complete
their journeys to and from the University, PA Hospital, the Urban Village and
destinations north, east, west and south of this area? The Green Bridge has
dedicated pedestrian and cycle paths, one on each side of the busway, designed
to attract pedestrians and cyclists and reduce pressure on motorised traffic on
arterial and local roads both on the Dutton Park side of the river and in St
Lucia. But the great divide created by Queensland Rail's land and rail lines
ensures that without the creation of dedicated routes pedestrians and cyclists
will have to go right around this divide, via the Annerley Road bridge over the
railway to the south, or via a messy route through industrial and residential
streets to the north of the railway as it goes from Park Road Station to Buranda
Station.
The cyclist approaching this precinct from the east will have to make some
choices as O'Keefe Street runs from under the Freeway to Ipswich Road. North or
south? Which hills? Which busy or narrow streets? The pedestrian wishing to get
from west of the railway easement to Buranda shopping centre or PA Hospital will
similarly have to take a long walk around, one way or the other. The Urban
Village, with all its new workers and residents, will find itself cut off from
the bulk of services offered by Buranda and Stones Corner, and will be confined
to Annerley Road as access to nearby shopping.
Now, long after the Busway plan has been made, tenders let and work begun, a
small team from Queensland Transport has been assembled to deal with pedestrian
and cycle access. Strange, indeed, that two busway stations, one linked to Park
Road Railway Station, have been planned without much thought to how patrons
might make their way from these stations to anywhere but their most immediate
environment. Only now that those plans are virtually set in concrete is some
consideration being given. And how is this consideration being given: a
committee of remote senior public servants has been formed to act for
stakeholders. There are representatives of Queensland Transport, the Department
of Main Roads, Queensland Health and PA Hospital, Education Queensland
(supposedly representing the interests of the Dutton Park State School
community), Queensland Rail, the Department of Public Works, a couple of
consultants and the Brisbane City Council. The one non-bureaucrat (or their
consultants) to be invited was the Manager of the Queensland peak body which
represents the State's (non-sporting) cyclists, Bicycle Queensland, to
articulate the needs of local cyclists. No one represented pedestrians or the
local community; no one represented local business people from Buranda or
Annerley Road shops and offices, no university students or staff. In other
words, the planning was being done from the top down by 'stakeholders' whose
interest in the project was bureaucratic rather than from their involvement in
the local community of would-be users.
The bureaucratic structures within which this planning takes place is not
designed for genuine integration of transport modes, nor is it designed to
fulfil the goals for promotion of active transport in Queensland and Brisbane -
the utterly impossible goal in the Council's 2005 Transport Plan of 15 per cent
of all trips to be walking and 8 per cent by cycle by 2016 being one. Busway
planners are required to focus only on the buses, and to some extent on getting
people to the busway stations. Treasury guidelines prevent release of any funds
allocated for Busways for 'non-Busway' related planning, construction or
facilities, even where proposed in conjunction with a Busway. They are not to be
allowed to plan footpaths or cycleways alongside the busway, as was originally
planned, but never built, for the South East Busway.
Further evidence of the reality behind the rhetoric of active transport can be
seen in the treatment that bicycle facilities and infrastructure has been given
even in the past year:
1. The almost two year 'temporary' diversion on the Bicentenial Bikeway caused
by work on Brisbane's sewers;
2. The inordinate delay in completing the missing link of the Western Freeway
bikeway;
3. The almost non-existent access to the CBD from the northside, save the wide
swing past the Victoria Park golf course and the ICB and in through the Roma
Street Parklands (whereupon one again meets heavy traffic); and
4. The long wait for a safe route from the city through the Normanby Fiveways.
This is not to forget the lost opportunity of the never-to-be-built South East
Busway cycleway, a vastly superior conception by comparison with the
inconveniently hilly and indirect South East Freeway Bikeway, patched together
over the past 15 years.
When it comes to provision of facilities for cyclists and pedestrians for secure
storage of bicycles and shower/changing after a hot walk, run or ride, neither
private landlords, building managers nor city council ordinances give much
support. While buildings have to provide car parks, thus intensifying the inflow
of commuter and shopper traffic to the CBD and other important employment nodes
close by (such as the Universities and hospitals), there is little compulsion or
inspection to enforce what little cycle parking is imposed by regulations (which
is the reason the facilities in the new Queens Plaza in Queen St Mall are
carefully hidden and thus not used, and the use of the showers demanded by
Council regulation restricted to those 'lucky' enough to have a security pass).
Despite all the wonderful Ministerial and Lord Mayoral words over the past
decade, no matter which Minister or Lord Mayor, regardless of party, is in
power, nothing has really changed since Wilbur Smith's Riverside Expressway was
built in the 1960s. The only major project by the Brisbane City Council is Trans
Apex, throwing billions of good money after bad, yet again. The car remains
dominant, and any public transport has to compete for custom with bikes and
walking. But it is public transport that gets the lion's share of the money not
allocated to cars.
All we can conclude is that the plans and goals of government and councils are
simply empty rhetoric - meaningless gestures toward politically correct goals,
no more significant than the lovely photographs of families cycling in
advertisements for master planned housing developments or the carefree shopper
depicted in an advertisement for Queens Plaza.
--
Karen Gallagher
"Reverse the polarity and invert the particle flux!"
"You mean put the batteries in the other way?"
"...yes."
-Star Trek (any of them)