Damn fine rebuttal to MD's nonsense.
Onya Tanya!
😉
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Reaching breaking point. June 18, 2006
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/reaching-breaking-point/2006/06/17/1149964791318.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2
It's war on our congested city streets and the growing number of bicycle riders have become fair game, Catharine Munro writes.
'JUST yell out WAIT!," instructs Tanya Bosch to her class of would-be bicycle commuters.
It's one of her tough lessons of survival in the jungle that is Sydney's roads. Courtesy is sometimes not an option, even if yelling at cars may earn cyclists their bad name among pedestrians and motorists.
"I'm not even wondering if they are going to stop," Bosch continues, explaining what to do when drivers are oblivious to cyclists they are about to hit. "I just yell at them."
It's an odd coincidence that Bosch (pictured) is teaching officers of the Roads and Traffic Authority, the builder of NSW thoroughfares and target of scathing criticism by motorists and cyclists alike over how it does its job.
Last week 10 of its employees were learning skills for negotiating traffic on the roads that they also regulate. It's a program called Ride2Work, which is not funded by the RTA. Instead, City of Sydney council pays for large organisations to encourage cycling among its staff. Other participants have been Macquarie Bank and Lend Lease.
Bosch is aware that some of the skills she teaches are aggressive, but she says that just to be a cyclist on Sydney's roads is to attract flak.
"We have got a really bad reputation," she tells students.
Bad? Try appalling. In the views of many other road users, cyclists hog lanes, flout rules and frighten pedestrians. To top it off, they are arrogant and self-righteous. When cyclists take off ahead of the green light in order to get a spot in front of cars, the indignation is often audible. One RTA participant is genuinely bewildered as to why people have a problem with her on the roads.
Perhaps it's those couriers who whiz about the city, seemingly forever on the wrong side of the road, she wonders aloud. "Or maybe they don't want to put up with cyclists who get in the way."
As for arrogance, Bosch's husband Eddie, a policeman and a keen road cyclist, points out that when the risk of being hit arises, cyclists can act out of fear.
"Drivers would be swearing and carrying on if they thought they were going to be killed," he says. "We do get a fright when a car comes too close to us."
Despite the near misses that all cyclists experience, some health experts argue that the belief that bike riding is dangerous is false because far more people die in car accidents.
"People are overestimating the risks of injury and death by 10 times," says associate professor Chris Rissel, director of the health promotion unit at the Sydney South West Area Health Service.
The RTA says that between 1994 and 2004, the greatest number of annual cycling fatalities was 23 in 1994. By contrast, 439 people were killed in cars in 1994. The margin between car and bike is even wider for injuries. While just over 1300 cyclists were injured in 1994, the figure was just under 20,000 for motorists.
But bike accidents are a bit like shark attacks: they loom large in the public consciousness. Freak events such as the one in which an 18-year-old novice driver killed Australian cycling team member Amy Gillett in Germany last July are deeply etched in people's minds.
MOST people like the idea of cycling. Cyclists don't burn fossil fuels and they keep themselves healthy. City of Sydney council boasts that when 26 of its participants rode a total of 8600 kilometres in a 12-week period, they avoided burning the equivalent of 1894 kilograms of greenhouse gases they would have generated if the had travelled the same distance in an average-size car.
And we like riding bikes: in fact, bicycle sales outstrip those of cars by a healthy margin.
More than 1.2 million bikes were sold in 2004, while motor vehicle sales totalled just over 950,000, federal body Austroads says in its National Cycling Strategy. But fear, combined with inadequate infrastructure, is stopping many from cycling, says Bicycle NSW's Alex Unwin.
Last year a Victorian parliamentary inquiry into road rage found that cyclists were in the firing line because motorists were not aware of the rules governing bicycles. "The mere presence of bicycles on the road is often sufficient to precipitate acts of road violence, without the need for any additional incident," submitted one health academic.
The warfare is only set to intensify as more people get on their bikes and fight for space on the city's congested roads.
High petrol prices, traffic jams and a failing public transport system are inducing the change, proponents claim. European studies show that travelling up to eight kilometres by bike is only a few minutes slower than by car. The few official statistics that exist seem to support this statement.
Figures supplied to The Sun-Herald by the RTA show that the numbers using the four main bike commuter routes in Sydney increased by an average of 19 per cent to 2460 last year. Participants in the annual Spring Cycle organised by Bicycle NSW increased from 4700 in 2000 to 7500 in 2005.
The rise in cycling numbers comes despite the reputation of Sydney's streets as mean, where the drivers are hostile, the thoroughfares narrow and the weather too hot. The rest of the city's natives are supposed to be too scared to take all of that on.
Sydneysiders do ride less than the residents of any other capital city, with only 1 per cent of the population riding every day. This compares with 4 per cent in Perth where there are more cyclists than any other city, the National Cycling Strategy report says.
Nevertheless, bike riding is still on the rise. On the Anzac Bridge - a major arterial link between the CBD and Sydney's inner west - the bike route was used by 30 per cent more people last year than in 2004. The numbers of cyclists using the Iron Cove Bridge cycling track increased by 9 per cent, the same increase occurred on the Harbour Bridge and 28 per cent more bikes used the Anzac Parade cycleway.
Those numbers do not include those who share the roads with motorists. Although some of those who are timid are getting organised. They are catching what's called a "bike bus".
Every day of the working week, bicycle campaigner Fiona Campbell "conducts" the bus from Marrickville to the city and home again. Riding at the back, she calls out directions to a group of between four to eight cyclists. Another "bus" ferries commuters from Burwood to the city once a week.
Her first stop is Marrickville's Henson Park Hotel at 6.58am and her last is the Archibald Fountain at Hyde Park at 7.30am.
Many of her "passengers" are new cyclists who are finding their feet on Sydney's roads. "It's safer and it's also more fun and social," Campbell says.
Employing the maxim of safety in numbers, groups travel a designated route each morning and evening. The bus is complete with a "conductor" and "driver", and travels according to a timetable.
The growth in the number of cyclists would be even greater if the RTA built more bike paths, experts say.
New projects such as the M7, which links Sydney's south-west and north-west suburbs, have bike lanes. "The next step is to complete all the links so that people can use it and get to it," says Unwin of the need for more cycleways.
Yet even the NRMA has become impatient with bikes. While it may be legal for cyclists to occupy a whole lane, even two abreast, rather than stick close to the gutter, the respected motoring lobby group views the practice as "hogging" the road.
"Cyclists shouldn't hang in the middle of the lane," says NRMA spokesman Nic Frankham.
"They should share it sensibly and use cycle paths where possible."
IT'S HARD to work out how the state will pay for dedicated bike paths. In the 2004-05 budget for NSW, the then roads minister Michael Costa slashed the allocation for bike paths from $15 million to $5 million and abolished the unit responsible for bike safety.
Now that it's gone, pro-cyclists such as the Greens MP Lee Rhiannon find it impossible to work out just how much the state spends on bike safety because it's no longer a budget item. A spokesman for Roads Minister Eric Roozendaal said this year's bike budget had been increased to $7 million.
The NSW Government has a policy of matching councils dollar-for-dollar for the bike paths they build. However, with only $5 million for the year to spend throughout the state, no one is taking this form of funding seriously any more. Instead, they are resorting to other funds to ensure bike paths are built.
In the eastern suburbs, Woollahra Municipal Council uses the funds allocated for traffic safety to build bike paths. This is on the basis that bikes reduce the amount of motor vehicle traffic.
One of its Greens councillors, Tanya Excell, compares NSW to Queensland, where the south-east of that state receives $10 million of bike paths each year.
"We are just falling way behind," she says. "It's going to be harder and harder to drive a vehicle because of petrol costs and it's irresponsible because of climate change."
Rissel says cycling has to be better for a commuter's health than driving. Three years ago he ran a study for his area service which recorded the weight of 6810 people and found that 49 per cent of them were overweight and that 69 per cent drove to work.
"Driving to work was associated with being overweight or obese," he wrote then.
He believes now that it's a "tragedy" the RTA isn't spending more on bike tracks."There's insufficient space on the road for cars and bicycles and people, and it simply needs to accommodate all means of travel, " he says.
Five rules you should know
* Bicycles are allowed in transit lanes that require cars to carry more than three passengers.
* Cyclists are not allowed to overtake on the left side of a vehicle that is turning left.
* A cyclist can ride beside only one other cyclist. Riding more than two abreast can attract a $44 fine.
* A car must not drive in the bicycle lane, except in certain conditions.
* Bicycles are allowed in bus lanes, tram lanes, transit lanes and truck lanes, but not "bus only" lanes.
