Melbourne Bicycle User Group

The Masterplan

St Kilda Rd is divided along most of its length between City of Port Phillip (CoPP) and City of Melbourne (CoM). St. Kilda Road is the main commuter route for people who ride bikes from the south eastern suburbs into the city, with over 3000 cyclists per day. It is the second most dangerous street for cyclists in Melbourne, with 174 crashes between 2006 and 2015. There is a narrow bicycle lane, with ‘car dooring’ a major concern on this route.

For about 10 years now a masterplan has been in preparation by CoM, CoPP has been working hard to get safe bike lanes and VicRoads has done the preparatory work to make it happen.

History

Current St Kilda Rd bikelanes: 

The masterplan has never reached the stage of a draft for public comment, but has always included protected bike lanes. About eight years ago, this was leaked to the media who door-stopped the then roads minister (now treasurer of Victoria) Tim Pallas about the idea. His off-the-cuff reaction was to reject safe bikelanes in favour of “easing congestion” for cars. The masterplan then gathered dust for about four years before the Balieu Government was elected in 2010 and indicated they were willing to take a fresh look at St Kilda Rd. City of Port Phillip, City of Melbourne and Local liberal member Clem Newtown-Brown pushed hard for safe bicycle lanes on St Kilda Road.

After forming government in 2014 Labor promised to investigate protected bicycle lanes. During construction of the Domain Station, motor traffic in St Kilda Road is constrained, creating a once in a lifetime opportunity to construct safe bike lanes while traffic levels are low. VicRoads spent six months and over $300,000 investigating options for protected bicycle lanes. The study outcomes haven’t been released but Vicroads has looked at protected lanes in the centre of St Kilda Rd, adjacent to the tram tracks.  This time it was the Premier who was asked on talkback radio and replied “we won’t be having any of that”. Although the project hasn’t been officially cancelled, the Premier’s comment makes progress unlikely.  City of Port Phillip stated http://www.portphillip.vic.gov.au/apr-2017-media_6957.htm that they would prefer footpath adjacent protected lanes.

Centre-of-road Lanes

No details are known for the design of centre-of-road lanes. If done well with effective separation from cars, with controlled turns at all intersections to remove conflict with motor vehicles, centre-of-road lanes would be much better than the current door-zone lanes. We believe however that a superior option exists which should be considered. Please read on and give us your comments below.

Melboune BUG’s proposal

Melbourne BUG’s proposal is for bike lanes adjacent to the footpath, with a buffer between bikes and cars provided by the nature strip (grass and trees) as well as the car-parking lane. This is possible because the trees in St Kilda Rd are old and due to be replaced, so new trees can be located closer to the centre of the road. Putting a protected lane in the usual position, next to the kerb, is problematic owing to the large number of driveways, so while the current door-zone lane hides bikes from cars leaving driveways, a kerbside lane will hide bikes from cars leaving the road. Putting the lane next to the footpath, with effective delineation to deter pedestrian ingress, will create space for a car to wait out of the traffic lane before or after crossing the footpath and bikelane. Cars will cross the bike lane at right angles, with good visibility. The footpath and bikelane could be raised to present “piano keys” to cars, slowing them on the approach.

Locating the bike lane adjacent to the footpath recognises that bike riders are vulnerable road users, more similar to pedestrians than to cars. Whilst the current users of St Kilda Rd might include many who are commuting into the City, we know that most people will only cycle short distances. They aren’t doing it at the moment because they don’t feel safe, but provided with safe lanes they will be more likely to. Using a bike to access addresses along St Kilda Rd will be encouraged by these lanes. Centre-of-road lanes are possible in a small number of roads in Melbourne. Changing driver behaviour will be more successful if road layouts are well understood and predictable. Making St Kilda Rd different to 99.9% of Melbourne’s roads is not ideal.

Dockless Share Bikes

The emergence of dockless bikeshare will also encourage short trips by bicycle. The huge success of these bikes is a game-changing opportunity to take cycling mainstream. Massive uptake of share bikes will make short trips by bike common and an attractive way to get to nearby destinations.

We believe that focusing on what current cyclists want is only part of the story, and there are many people not currently using bikes who will find ubiquitous dockless sharebikes very convenient. We base this forecast on the experience of other cities as well as Melbourne’s experience so far.

 A centre-of-road lane works against short trips by making it harder to access mid-block destinations.

Trams

Trams on St Kilda Rd will continue to dominate movement for longer trips but share bikes could take over for short trips. Also, surprisingly, trams can’t cope with the load against the peak direction, as anyone trying to get into the City in the evening peak would know. Imagine watching full trams bypass your stop, and seeing a share bike sitting on the nature strip next to the safe bike lane.

Evaluate both options

Our position is that government should evaluate both options with costed designs for each and public debate about their relative merits.

Whatever your opinion on a one-meter passing law, good data is hard to come by to know for sure either way.  It might be the #157th most important thing to make riding a bike safer and more popular, or it might be the next best thing after protected bike lanes and filtered permeability.  States that have introduced this law have done no before-and-after studies to determine whether there was any effect, beneficial or otherwise. Victoria may introduce a 1m law soon, so time is short to rectify this data deficit and get measurements before a law exists, and to continue with measurement after a law is introduced.

You can help by volunteering to mount a PassBox on your bike for a week on our website for this project at http://passboxmelbourne.com/.

Read our Our detailed plan for South Bank Boulevard and then sign the petition!

Our petition has the key improvements that Melbourne needs to attract more people to cycling for everyday trips. Except for St Kilda Rd lanes, Council hasn’t supported these in the past, so we will be asking candidates to sign a pledge to support these things:

• Protected lanes with protected intersections on Southbank Boulevard
• The 2016-2020 bicycle plan – implemented in full
• Protected lanes on St Kilda Road
• A safe route through the south side of the CBD
• Protected lanes on Flemington Road.

The City of Melbourne is consulting on its renewal of Vic Markets. This could potentially have a large impact of the bike-friendliness of the whole area.

Make your submission here.

For inspiration, read Melbourne BUG’s submission, below:

Melbourne BUG – Submission on Queen Victoria Market renewal proposal

1. Car Park

In addition to car parking spaces, we would like to see secure bicycle parking in this area as well. This secure parking should cater for QVM employees as well as customers who request additional security, for example because they ride an expensive e-bike that they would not want to park using the standard above-ground facilities. We think the secure bicycle parking area should therefore be split into two parts. One part for employees only, accessible by swipe key and including end-of-trip facilities, and the other part for customers using bike lockers (http://www.cora.com.au/bikelockers/cyclesafebicyclelockers/ for example). The entry to/exit from the secure bicycle parking should be separate from the car entry, so that bicycles will not have to navigate a queue of cars lining up to enter the garage or swerve around access poles.

2. Access

We feel that the QVM infrastructure and surrounding area should be inviting people to walk or ride their bicycle to the market, and doing so should be rewarded. This reward can come in many flavours, most importantly a sense of safety and comfort relative to using a car. The ‘inviting infrastructure’ consists of several elements in our view.

Firstly, being able to safely access the new QVM by foot or bike will be paramount to its success in our opinion. With car ownership and use being actively discouraged with new developments in the CBD, many of the CBD residents will come to market as pedestrians. At the same time, the trend in surrounding suburbs is quite clear as well: bicycle use for everyday transport is on the rise and this will continue into the future as more and more people realize the convenience of riding a bike in and around the city. The City of Melbourne Transport Strategy states: “We are a walking and cycling city, and Council provides infrastructure to improve the safety and convenience of cyclists and pedestrians” (p4).

Assets that help to provide bicycle access to the QVM are the separated bike lanes on La Trobe St and part of Elizabeth St north, and the improved bike lanes planned for William St . However, the Elizabeth St lanes do not reach all the way to Victoria St/Therry St, and the William St lanes need to continue the length of Peel St, being the continuation of William St immediately adjacent to the QVM. The City of Melbourne Bicycle Plan 2012-16 states “Investigate options for a separated or quality route from Dudley Street to Royal  Parade and Flemington Road. This route will also service the Queen Victoria Market and Flagstaff Gardens.” (p20).

In addition, the redesign of Franklin St provides an  opportunity for council to equip it with protected bike lanes and a safe crossing at the new Franklin-Peel-Dudley intersection. Elimination of roundabouts at Peel/Dudley and Queen/Franklin will improve access and safety for pedestrians and cyclists. Franklin Street currently provides four traffic lanes plus parking which is excessive relative to its local function, and this should be reduced to two traffic lanes to provide safe space for bicycles and more pedestrian space. Retaining four lanes in Franklin St and creating a new four lane road on the market’s southern boundary will create and perpetuate a barrier between the market and the City: as stated in the Summary of Proposals: “The streets around the Market form barriers to the local area and make it difficult to walk around”. Safe bicycle lanes in Franklin St will improve access to the Market by connecting to other bike routes such as William St and Swanston St.

We also feel that the connection to QVM from Cobden St and/or O’Connell St should be improved for bicycle access to/from Queensberry St which would be the preferred route for most of North Melbourne and Kensington. We strongly encourage council to design a “Bicycle Access Plan” for QVM which integrates the above points and potentially other routes, as well as traffic management around the entry/exit points of the car park, to limit the danger to cyclists of cars queuing on street or doing right hand turns to enter/exit the car park. This is particularly important for those routes that are part of the Principal Bike Network like Peel Street. The Bicycle Access Plan should be included in the QVM masterplan.

Another important element to create the inviting atmosphere is the provision of bicycle parking facilities. In addition to the secure bicycle parking in the car park area, we feel there should be ample bicycle parking available at various strategic locations around the QVM  making it easy to park your bike close to where you need to go. These locations need to relate to the bicycle access routes shown in the “Bicycle Access Plan”.One can even think about “shopping carts” to be supplied at the bicycle parks to make it easier for people to carry their purchases around and back to the bike. It’s easy to carry 5-10kgs of fresh produce on your bike in a pannier or basket, but it’s much less fun to carry it around while shopping. Well positioned parking and innovations such as “shopping carts” will also encourage cyclists to use the parking facilities provided and avoid bicycle clutter at other locations.