Adelaide's Cycling Death traps
Adelaide might have some good recreational bike tracks, but when it comes to the commuter cyclist, the infrastructure is severely underfunded. While there are a few disjointed bicycle lanes around the city, in order to travel safely cyclists need continuous safe options for the entire length of the major arterial routes. While it is good to promote recreational cycling, it is the commuter cyclist who most benefits the community, as most likely they would otherwise be using some polluting greenhouse gas emitting form of transport, and at the same time by cycling they are helping remove congestion from our roads.
There is limited benefit in spray painting bicycles onto the road when it relatively safe to ride anyway only to have the bike lane come to an abrupt end where it becomes most dangerous.
For example traveling from Salisbury to the city, there is a good bicycle lane along Salisbury Highway as seen below.
Looks like a pretty good
option
Ah – the turnoff onto Pt Wakefield Rd
Still a good ride
Around the bend and ..
Oh you can just squeeze your bike in here,
unless it a B double semi happens to come along
Still alive .... it get better
From 3 lanes with barely enough room to
squeeze
a bike in...
By the time you get the drive-in
we have 2 lanes and no verge
Of course once could try the alternate
route through Mawson Lakes and down
Main North Road. Again on Main North
Road we see the long promising bike lane
But
yet again...
Death trap!
And on the other side of the road, intrepid cyclists get a choice
Gee what to do?
It reminds me of the cartoons where the Coyote
would try and lure the road runner into a trap
by painting a road to some dangerous situation
Maybe they ran out of paint!
For a full interactive map of the route click here
I love cycling and Adelaide has such potential to become a cycling meca but we need those vital missing pieces of the puzzle to reduce the significant dangers that current cycle commuters face and which prevents many potential cycle commuters from getting on their bike. Indeed I'd love to be able to encourage my kids to use cycling as a means of transport, but there is no way any caring parent want their child out commuting on much of the infrastructure currently provided. Indeed South Australia is now the most dangerous state in the country for cyclists
At the moment Adelaide cycle network is like computer networks 20 years ago before the internet. They offered some benefits, but it was the joining together of these networks through the internet which had the massive impact on society. Well guess what, if you join Adelaide's cycle networks together to provide a safe web of efficient routes across the city, it will have a major impact on our society.
The South Australian Government is spending over $30 million for a kilometer or so extenstion of a tramline down the middle of the city which will clog up the city and will only be used regularly by a very small segment of the population and is unlikely to save any lives whereas the Government is investing less than one million in new bicycle lanes (many in places which were already relatively safe to ride anyway). If that $30 million were invested instead on providing a backbone of cycling infrastructure for our city, it could have a far more significant impact on the city, joining together disjointed bike networks enabling people to safely commute all over the city, saving lives, reducing congestion, reducing green house gas emissions and promoting fitness.
Clearly the token spent by the current government of bicycle lanes indicate it does not genuinely care about the cyclists of SA. The government does have plan but we can see clearly by the huge difference between the plan and reality that the government really doesn't care for for cyclists in this state.
I am setting up a Hall of Shame page with similar pictures of dead end bike lanes from across Adelaide, so if you have any similar pictures from around Adelaide, please email them to me dbowler@eleceng.adelaide.edu.au
One final comment to those motorists who object to cyclists on the roads (and I think that it is usually out of jealosy when we go wizzing past them stuck in traffic), if you don't want to support cycling for any of the ultraistic reasons, consider doing it for selfish reasons: If you can encourage more people to cycle, they won't be on the road in front of you. And when someone takes that last parking spot just in front of you - if they had been on a bike, the parking spot would have been yours.
By David Bowler
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