We need a Minister for Cycling to plan and work with local councils to complete both cross-city routes (the hub) and safer, more convenient urban commuter routes (the spokes).
As an example, cyclists wishing to commute from many of Melbourne’s eastern suburbs currently have to negotiate very busy roads, back streets or detour to the Gardiners Creek or Eastern Freeway bike paths when they travel to and from the central business district.
A safer more direct cycle link, possibly following the Box Hill railway line for sections, would encourage many more people to commute and make local trips by bicycle rather than take their car. This would ease road congestion and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions too.
This approach could be adopted for all Melbourne's existing railway lines too, where easements are available for bike paths.
Links
- Back on track, The Age, April 7, 2008
- Strategies and plans - East West Link Needs Assessment final report, Department of Infrastructure, Victorian Government
- Eastern Rail Trail proposal
- Eastern Rail Line Trail - Boroondara BUG
3 comments:
Sir Rod's report is by and large a bunch of hypocritical trash. The only reference to global warming is that cars will be weaned to Green fuels. Ha! That's just plain silly.
The Tarneit proposal is dumb because nobody wants to take a VLine freighter from Werribee to Tarneit in an indirect, non-linear line that takes the cake as far as improvident planning goes. The metro is not such a good plan since we have no capacity problems and Doncaster's rail plan from the 1920's remains merely a plan at this point in 2008...
I too have a number of concerns about Sir Rod Eddington's report. He really doesn't address climate change factors relating to transport modes and seems to gloss over the simple fact that congestion is really a major concern and building more roads and tunnels won't address this - just like Citylink didn't.
I will address these concerns in more detail in another blog post.
Cr Janet Rice also made some good points in a recent speech on this topic which you can viewhere.
Indeed. Janet Rice knows her onions. But then again, I should think all 'Greens' do no?
On another note, I would remove the 'word vertification' if I were you. Reubenville research has exposes that it just deters commentators and has no real effect on spammers.
When are ye going to comment on my blog? One of my recent posts exposes the perils of Bicycle Victoria.
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