Cycling in Sydney Australia
George St, trams, pedestrians, but no bikes?
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/chic-shops-great-sites--by-george-its-a-n...
If you have the App, there is a marvelous old film clip from 1906 of trams running down George St, with a cyclist weaving his way round pedestrians and carts. Back to the future!
How should bikes be accommodated when the LR is built? It seems CoS has already written us out, in terms of bike lanes anyway.
Edit: the 1906 film is shown on this link side by side with a 2012 video of the same section of George St and a modern cyclist.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHFR9Zsp33w&feature=youtube_gdat...
Tags: George St, city, light rail, trams
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Bill Parker on -
As long as we don't get a Melbourne Swanston St implementation which looks really bad with the "bike lane" along the tram stop "platforms" with passengers constantly crossing or standing in them, leads to constant conflict between the two, even now with some of the stops being many months old there is near misses every few minutes
The video shows some vehicles and trams sharing the centre bit of George St so I guess that's where the bikes go too, we will have to learn the skills of correct tram track crossing technique
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Permalink Reply by Bob Moore on -
Particularly at Haymarket and Circular Quay where tram tracks will be curving in from side streets. I hope they can find some room for bike lanes in the pedestrianised area north of Town Hall or it will just be like 1906, only worse because of the greater numbers of pedestrians.
We need at least one decent north south bike route through the CBD and also good mid city access on all streets, otherwise it will be creeping around the edges on Kent and College.
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Permalink Reply by St Etienne on -
If bikes are going to run alongside the trams then I assume the same 'Stop' law will apply for when the tram's doors open. Despite this being a $352 fine down here it is an offence that is (sadly) very often committed by cyclists.
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Permalink Reply by Martin Geliot on -
In Heidelberg DE at least that issue is solved. Alighting pax have a refuge and wait to cross the road (including cyclists) for a safe gap or a green lantern.
The Melbourne system/design is bodgy in this respect, although props to Melbourne for having trams!
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Permalink Reply by Martin Geliot on
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It seems to me that if this gets done we'll just mix it, riding where we need to. Cycle lanes wouldn't fit and if squeezed in would be bunged up anyway.
That in turn means being sure to take tracks at a fat angle, or jump them, or select tyres fat enough to avoid dropping into the tracks.
I noticed in the city this week around half the people crossing green bike lanes did not look.
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Permalink Reply by Bob Moore on
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Everyone is calling the new Edinburgh trams and bike lanes a fiasco, if the hits on Googling "edinburgh trams cycleway" are anything to go by. check the photo on the road.cc site.
Also saw something recently about how there was space for separated bike lanes in West St, Edinburgh, after some Dutch bicycle engineers did a design. Much wider than George St though.
If it is just a free for all with no space allocated for bikes, or at least designated or suggested lines for bike travel, there is going to be one huge backlash from pedestrians and lots of impatient motorists, white vans, trams etc and calls for banning cyclists.
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Permalink Reply by Martin Geliot on
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Yes, I read some worrying Edinburgher stuff too.
In Germany I didn't ride where the trams are very much. It was either cars and bikes sharing a lane next to the trams, or bikes & cars on separated lanes, or off-road cycleways.
The worst of it was car drivers getting impatient stuck behind me and squeezing by. Lane taking was required there too, and then they generally behaved. Concrete kept cars off the tram's spaces
My guess is George Street would be alright if it's car free, bikes would just mix it throughout. If cars were allowed through then if space is to be shared with bicycles it has to be narrow enough to render overtaking impossible. The wider streets could have separated facilities.
Regardless of all this, I can't see Sydney CBD working unless most motor traffic is ringed out during the day and evenings. By 2030 it'll have to be low speeds, low emissions and heavily restricted motoring I'm sure. Which is why we'll need the trams.
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Permalink Reply by Bill Parker on
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There is a few buildings with their car park entrance on George and stores like Myers with loading dock entrance also and the hundreds of small shops supplied by fleets of white vans. Deliveries will have to be restricted to appropriate hours but I am not sure what they would be, early morning perhaps but that's tough on delivery persons and shop managers, maybe fleets of delivery cargo bicycles are the go? And will taxis and all buses be completely excluded, otherwise the volume of traffic starts to get to the level where it is more a road than pedestrian space with trams and bicycles.
Anyway, the draft transport plan did not actually commit to the trams and even if the final one does it will be decades away as all the cash will go for motorways, so not to worry then, we may be lucky to see it by 2030. Time for another 100 consultants reports yet.
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Permalink Reply by Bob Moore on
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Just posting this for future use, if and when the light rail gets the nod. It has some good cross sections of how to fit bike lanes, trams, footpaths, cars into varying road widths. Done for Leith Walk in Edinburgh, apparently still being hotly debated there. The trams got canned from this section due to cost blow outs.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/101067461/Cycling-Edinburgh-Tram
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Permalink Reply by herzog on -
I'm not convinced on the trams on George St thing.
This is a route already serviced by the city circle line, a service offering enormous capacity that is woefully underutilised during the day (ie: between the AM and PM peaks)
The reason it's not being used is because it costs $3 or so to travel one stop, and you have to line up at a complicated ticketing machine often for several minutes.
All that needs to be done is make travel within the city circle free, or a minimal cost with a simplified ticket (eg: $1, one button machine)
The big advantage of the train line is that it's underground, and doesn't contrubute to surface clutter and congestion as would a tram. This leaves the surface free for people and bikes.
The other big advantage is that it's already built and paid for. It just needs to be made easier to use.
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Permalink Reply by Bob Moore on
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OK,but are we going to start a campaign against the trams now? One of the main reasons for putting them back in is to get buses out of George St, with an easy interchange at Broadway. If the train line went under Broadway we wouldn't need the trams so much, although nothing beats a direct change at the surface. And tram stops would be spaced much closer than the rail, you would have maybe two or three between Central and Town Hall, etc.
Be good to have bike lanes down Broadway into George, as far as Town Hall at least. Then you would need to use maybe Pitt St or York St to head north if you didn't want to weave in and out of pedestrians. If George St was pedestrianised mid city speculating there might be a case for opening Pitt St Mall to limited traffic, particularly bikes.
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Permalink Reply by Colin on -
The city circle isn't good for short hops through the city because it doesn't have enough stops, and each stop requires a whole lot of walking and stairs/escalators to get from street to train. For many intra-city trips it requires as much walking as it saves.
A tram solves the problem by having more stops and having them right there on the street where the people are. A lot of people who were not planning on catching a tram will jump on one simply because they see it coming and they think "why not, I'll give my feet a rest". You can't make that sort of decision with an underground train.
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