Young St Bikeway – Out to consultation
Great news – at the council meeting on Tuesday the 28th of January, Unley Council voted to progress the preferred design for the Young St bikeway to community consultation!
Young St is an important east-west connection in our cycling network, linking Glen Osmond Rd, Unley Rd, George St, King William Rd, the Rugby-Porter Bikeway and the Mike Turtur Bikeway. What’s on the table to be improved is to make the streets safer in a section from Unley Rd to Glen Osmond Rd. The treatment being proposed is a better version of what’s on the Wood Weller Bikeway – but with more landscaping and trees!
It’s a great design so we are excited. However, we will need everyone’s support to let council know we want it to happen. Expect to hear more from us soon!
You can find details of the proposed design in the council’s meeting minutes. Look for pages 27 on wards.
Something is happening on King William Rd…
Work has begun on an exciting new project on King William Rd 👀
Council is installing painted, parking-side-buffered bike lanes on the stretch of King William Rd between Charles Walk / Simpson Parade and the Mike Turtur Bikeway. No, painted bike lanes aren’t ideal, but we have reason to be excited about these improvements:
- They are miles better than the complete absence of cycling infrastructure on this stretch of road previously.
- In making room for the bike lanes the car lanes are narrowed, which slows cars down and makes the street safer for everybody.
- The intersection of Young St is particularly improved for cyclists as the stop lines have been moved to make the crossing distance shorter. Remember, Young St is a future east-west bikeway connection!
- The bike lanes are parking side buffered, giving people on bikes some protection from the very real risk of being doored by people exiting parked cars.
- This stretch of King William Rd connects the popular bikeways of Charles Walk, Wood-Weller, Young St, the Mike Turtur Bikeway and of course the destinations of the King William Rd shopping strip and the Adelaide City!
- No carparks were harmed in the making of these bike lanes and so there should be no outcry to reverse the bike lanes due to impacts on parking 😂
These short-term improvements were promised in the 2024-2025 budget (see more about that below) and actually form Stage 4 of the Wood-Weller Bikeway! We understand that a long-term, visionary solution for this stretch of road is under consideration by council but on hold pending renewal of the entire streetscape sometime in the future.
Goodwood Ward Supplementary Election – Candidate Queries
In the lead up to the current supplementary Council Election in Goodwood, UBUG reached out to all nominated Goodwood Ward Council candidates with a series of three questions, giving the candidates an opportunity to flag where they stand on walking and cycling.
In addition to the candidate scorecard above, you can read candidates detailed responses here.
2024-2025 Budget Scorecard
We are more than halfway through the 2024-2025 financial year and it’s time to take stock on the walking and cycling projects council promised to fund this financial year.
Half way through the year and around half of the projects are complete. That’s not bad, but we can do better! Council are doing their best to implement projects that have been funded, but time and resources are limited. If there’s a project on the list you’d really like to see happen, let your elected members know.
Community member Andrew shared with us these evocative photos from our recent February Social Ride. A highlight of our month is leading these rides in and around Unley and seeing faces old and new. We love bikes and the people that ride them, so these rides are a lot of fun. They are also an important part of the advocacy work we do here at Unley BUG, because being out in public gives cyclists visibility and political legitimacy.
If you’re looking for something to do on a Saturday morning, why not come join us? We post about our rides on our Facebook or Instagram pages.
I’m just going to leave this next image here. Stay tuned for more information!
Thank you for reading this far and we look forward to seeing you out on the street or on one of our social rides.
Leave a Reply