" IMPLEMENTATION- TRANSLATING THE VICTORIAN BICYCLE
STRATEGY INTO ACTION.
The total cost of all initiatives plus the provision
of comprehensive principal and local area networks is estimated to be in
the order of $250 million (say $350 million at 2001 prices), it is important
that priorities be established for the staged implementation of initiatives
to ensure that the maximum benefits from the funds invested in the next
ten years."
So there you have it in a nutshell, $25 million a year for ten years at 1990 prices (that was when it was actually written) Today that means $ 35 million a year for ten years and that is all I am asking for. That was in the BFA submission I wrote that hardly anybody seems to understand.
My own calculations independently of construction costs confirm that. When I documented the above in my paid work last month for the Victorian Department of Infrastructure, together with history of bicycle planning in Melbourne recently it gave the planners something to attack the road engineers over. Unfortunately ex- Vic Roads staff still work in DOI are still controlling the agenda but only just.
The following letter with minor variations has been sent to minister Batchelor below by more than one group. Yes relevance because Sydney is in an even bigger mess and Brisbane is going the same way. It is somewhat better in Adelaide and Perth. The total failure to get real commitments for bike plan implementation with targets for annual construction programs is the root problem.
I also have a list of all Victorian MPs with postal and email addresses that is useful for lobbying purposes. Somebody will have to scan the list onto a computer as a burglar pinched mine a couple of weeks ago.
Bye Alan.
====================================
The Hon, Peter Batchelor.
Dear minister,
There is need for a commitment in "Challenge Melbourne", the new land use and transport strategy being prepared for the Metropolitan area, and we need a Recommendation in it for the promised metropolitan ‘Bike lane network’ and ‘shared footway network’ to be completed in ten years.
Our members are concerned about the lack of progress in making main roads safe for cyclists ten years after Vic Roads was given this job to do by the government of the day (Lambert 1991). In the ten years since then Vic Roads have repeatedly told ministers they are creating a continuous network of Bike lanes on main roads Throughout the metropolitan area but the Bike lane network is not a month or even a year late but will take decades to complete.
Vic Roads was given the job of hosting the State Bicycle
Committee in 1989 (and more recently renamed the Bicycle Advisory Committee)
with the purpose of coordinating the efforts of local governments and other
government agencies.
This responsibility has been grossly neglected with the
result the off-road shared footway network is also far behind schedule.
As consequence there are no funded plans in existence that would complete
the Bike lane network or the shared footway network in yet another ten
years.
The Bikeway construction and coordination record 1991 to 2001
1. Only 467 kilometre
(26%) of the 2000 km of Bike lane have been lane
marked after ten years and of these 67 kilometre had
already been lane marked
between 1981 and 1991. (Lambert 1991). This means that
since 1991 an average of
40 kilometre of bikelanes per year has been marked. At
that average rate, it would take VicRoads 37 years to complete the Bikelane
network.
2. Only 640 kilometres (47%) of the 1370 km long shared footway network is complete including 65 kilometres provided by VicRoads as part of freeway construction. 575 km of the 640 kilometre shared footway network has been being provided by Melbourne Water, Parks Victoria and local government. As 300 km of the shared footways were built before 1991 an average of only 34 kilometre per year has been built since then and at that rate would take another 18 years to complete.
Mostly as a result of these VicRoads token measures on
the main roads which are
perceived as being hazardous by most potential cyclists,
the number of bicycle trips in Melbourne has decreased over the last five
years from 161,900 in 1995 to 128,600 in 1999 a decline of 20% in bicycle
trips. Only in the CBD and some inner suburban areas, has cycling increased
because local councils have enabled cyclists to either bypass main roads
on residential streets or collector roads that have been traffic calmed.
There an urgent need for the Department of Infrastructure to provide a commitment in “Challenge Melbourne” to complete the promised ‘Bikelane network’ and ‘shared footway network’ in ten years. This would require the creation of a bicycle planning unit with sufficient resources to coordinate the efforts of the many government agencies currently involved and funding to ensure that an arterial bikeway network is completed in ten years by the year 2011.
The following needs to be done to complete the bikeway networks in ten years:-
1. 150 kilometres of bikelanes and bicycle car parking
lanes to be lane marked
each year
2. 73 kilometres shared footways would have to be built
each year
4. A round $30 million per year would be needed each
year for construction and
planning with a bicycle planning unit staffed by around
six professionals.
Submitted by Alan Parker <alanpar@labyrinth.net.au>