Late autumn in Unley brings gentle rain, falling leaves and a whole host of walking and cycling projects under construction! We’re keeping it brief this month, but what we do have to share is exciting.
Header image: works are well underway for a new wombat crossing at Heywood Park!
Project construction updates
Works on three of Unley’s most popular bikeways continues to progress. The flagship entry to the Mike Turtur Bikeway adjacent Greenhill Rd is proceeding to schedule and expected to be completed in July (just over a month away!).
On the Rugby-Porter bikeway, improvements to Haslop Reserve (adjacent Unley Primary) have been ongoing since the recent school holidays. Works have finished at the Wattle St end but are expected to continue at the Cremorne St end for another month or so. Detours are in place – refer to the map provided by council below.
Finally, we’re excited to hear that the southern end of the Wood-Weller Bikeway is getting some much-needed love. The new wombat crossing currently under construction will greatly improve the safety of walking access to the wonderful Heywood Park. Once that’s complete, construction will shift to the intersection of Wood St and Northgate St, which is going to have its priority realigned to suit the bikeway. See full update on works for the council below:
From 13 April 2026, the intersection of King William Road and Northgate Street will be partially closed to facilitate construction of the new wombat crossing on Northgate Street, east of King William Road.
In addition, the intersection of Westall Street and Northgate Street will be closed periodically between 21 May and 31 May 2026. Both intersections are expected to be completed and fully open by the end of May 2026.
The intersection of Wood Street and Northgate Street will be closed between 26 May and 12 June 2026, for the junction realignment works to be undertaken. Directly impacted residents will be notified prior to the intersection closure, with local access maintained.
Walking + Cycling projects in the 2026/27 draft Unley Business Plan
One of late autumn’s most anticipated moments for walking and cycling advocates like us is the annual release of council budgets! Unley BUG have run a fine-toothed comb through the council’s proposed 2026/2027 business plan to identify each and every walking and cycling project funded for design or implementation.
There are some exciting ones here – some we knew about, and some we’d heard rumours on and would LOVE to see made reality. Let us know what you think – and then go and tell council you want all these to be funded and more!
(Notably missing is any reference to the Greenhill Rd shared path that Unley BUG has been advocating for. We’ll be asking council what’s up with that, especially after the recent motion in support of progressing the path).
Check out all of the funded projects below:
Bike counter data made public
Members of the Unley BUG community asked: are there bike counters in Unley already, and is the data publicly available? We reached out to Unley council’s transport team, who answered a resounding ‘yes’ and ‘yes’!
Council has bike counters installed on the Rugby-Porter bikeway at Young St, and Charles Walk between King William Rd and Unley Rd. You can view the data summaries here:
We’re told the counters also capture how many people walk through and we look forward to finding out more about that soon. Walking and cycling is often left out of the conversation when it comes to transport, and part of that is because while it’s easy to measure how many cars per day travel down a road, hardly anyone ever bothers to measure how many people walk or cycle. Counters like these, with their publicly-available data, are a step towards rectifying this. For example, it’s so cool to see that over 100,000 people have cycled on the Rugby-Porter Bikeway so far this year!
Advocacy for better connections to Adelaide
While most of what Unley BUG does revolves around what’s happening in Unley, we can’t ignore that people like to venture outside of our lovely area every now and then! To that end, we recently made a submission on the City of Adelaide’s 2026/27 Draft Business Plan and Budget, where we called for funding to be allocated towards two very important cycling projects that directly link bikeways in Unley to Adelaide.
The two projects in question are separated bike lanes along Peacock Rd and a signalised crossing for the Park Lands Trail at Glen Osmond Rd. Both of these projects are intended to improve connection, safety and amenity between the City of Unley’s two busiest bikeways (the Mike Turtur Bikeway and the Rugby-Porter bikeway) and the City of Adelaide. With over 1,000+ cyclists using each of these routes each day, they are important connections allowing people in Unley to access the City of Adelaide for work, study, shopping, dining and pleasure.
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