The SMH's answer to Piers Ackerman lets rip at cyclists again today in the SMH
Sydney is reaching gridlock and motorists are not to blame, writes Miranda Devine.
THE Cross City Tunnel debacle seems to have delivered more ammunition to the anti-car lobby, alas.
The new toll road failed because its real purpose was not to move cars from east to west but to deliver $100 million up front to a profligate State Government in exchange for closing down rival routes.
It wasn't the road or the size of the toll that was on the nose but the Government's nerve in selling free public roads to private interests without permission from the owners.
But anti-car zealots have concocted a different spin, claiming the Cross City Tunnel proves the logic-defying green maxim that building more roads only makes traffic congestion worse.
Now they are furious about Premier Morris Iemma's attempt to fix the traffic problems caused by the tunnel, especially his decision to delete the bike lane that was to have gone straight down William Street to allow cars to actually move on what was once a beautiful six-lane road.
To add insult to injury, wailed the Greens upper house MP Lee Rhiannon, Iemma made the announcement on World Environment Day.
The Greens are staging a "bicycle protest" against the decision in Martin Place today. "The announcement has … threatened the promised new bicycle route from William Street to Pyrmont Bridge via Kent Street," said Rhiannon yesterday. "Now the future for bicycle lanes for the Lane Cove Tunnel project has been placed under a cloud."
We can only hope.
Iemma's sensible decision to restore William Street to the cars for which it was designed so well goes some way towards reversing the disastrous legacy of the former roads minister Carl Scully, the vegan cyclist.
Thanks to Scully and an influential, pious and often militant bicycle lobby, the idea that Sydney will one day be like a large Amsterdam, with everyone riding to work in shrink-wrapped lycra, took vigorous hold, rather than being mocked as the joke it is.
Sydney has too many hills, too many narrow streets, too much traffic, too many buses, is too spread out and too hot and humid, to make riding a pushbike to work feasible for more than a handful of people. Bikes need to stay in flat, boring places like Canberra where nothing much happens and a laid-back public service work culture rules.
But the Roads and Traffic Authority, which was also heavily influenced by Scully as transport minister, has gone from a practical and effective organisation run by engineers to a demoralised, leaderless rabble infiltrated by green activists. Instead of concentrating on building safe roads to move the most cars in the most efficient way around our city, thus reducing pollution, petrol waste, gridlock and frustration, the RTA's mantra has become "The Road is there to Share" - with the rights of cyclists, pedestrians and koalas deemed at least equal to those of motorists.
The RTA website describes its "mission" as "delivery of the best transport outcomes balancing the needs of public transport passengers, cyclists, pedestrians …", with motorists and "commercial operators" last on the list.
With so many masters, no wonder the organisation is confused.
Instead of upgrading the Pacific Highway in a timely and cost-effective manner, the once-proud engineering organisation has been reduced to counting snail shells and building little overpasses and tunnels for koalas (which appear to be used mainly by cane toads).
The RTA even had a General Manager, Bicycles and Pedestrians, until Michael Costa abolished the position when he was briefly roads minister after Scully.
To the RTA, car users are simply to be milked, nagged and punished in the name of road "safety". Tougher penalties, lower speed limits, more traffic lights, red light cameras, speed cameras and double demerit point periods all conspire to enrage the most placid driver.
The result of this warm and fuzzy road-sharing philosophy is that driving in Sydney is now like negotiating a minefield.
Newly entitled pedestrians and cyclists, and their emboldened lobbyists, behave increasingly arrogantly. Pedestrians wander across roads with iPods and mobile phones stuck to their ears, oblivious to the physics of car braking. They expect instant obedience from motorists at zebra crossings, stepping off footpaths as if cocooned by an invisible shield of righteousness, incapable of accepting that they are at least 50 per cent responsible for their own safety.
As for cyclists, who believed the mirage of Scully's $250 million bike plan for NSW, with hundreds of kilometres of cycleways lined with tulips and rainbow kisses, stand by for the tantrum as the vision evaporates under the blowtorch of commerce.
The truth is, jealous as we are of our share of the road, most motorists would probably happily get out of our cars and onto other modes of transport if they only worked as well.
But instead of pushing for improvements to the bus and train systems, the anti-car brigade insists on pushing the alternative of light rail, whether it works or not, simply because it will steal yet another lane of the road from cars.
Light rail activists such as Sydney's Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, forget Sydney has already experimented with light rail; they pretend the under-utilised, inexplicably unfashionable monorail doesn't exist, and any murmurs to expand it are quickly silenced.
But Moore is relentless in her campaign for a whole new light rail to clog city streets, this month releasing two consultants' reports which aim to close Clarence Street and run trams down it. She claims this would halve city travelling times from Central to Circular Quay to just 14 minutes.
But there is a City Circle train that already goes from Central to Circular Quay in just nine minutes, so what is point, other than removing cars from the city by stealth?
She and her ilk should face facts. The road is not there to share. It is for cars. Footpaths are for pedestrians. And bike paths are for bikes, if there is any room left.
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