Young St Neighbourhood Bicycle Route – Stages 2+3 – Consultation
An entire NEW East-West cycling route in Unley?
Council has begun consultation on improvements to Young St to make it significantly safer and more convenient to cycle on. 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.
This bikeway already become significantly better after council installed a proper crossing where the bikeway meets George St. What’s on the table now is to make the streets themselves safer too, in a section from Unley Rd to Glen Osmond Rd. The treatment being proposed is similar to what has been successfully operating for a few years now on the Wood Weller Bikeway – but better, because it will have more landscaping and trees!
Check out the animation below for the proposed treatment to the section between George St and Glen Osmond Rd.
As always, it’s important that council hears from YOU so they know the community wants safer streets that allow for more people to make the choice to cycle in and around their local area. Please, visit the YourSay website to express your support for the project or head along to one of the two drop-in sessions council is running below:
- Saturday 3rd May, 10am-11am, McLeay Park, Parkside
- Wednesday 7 May, 5:15pm-6:15pm, McLeay Park, Parkside
South Road – Torrens to Darlington – Walking and Cycling
We all know about the Torrens to Darlington Project on South Road. It’s one of the biggest transport infrastructure investments in the history of our state – one that will solve our traffic problems once and for all. But did you know that amongst the billions of dollars spent on road-widening, there is actually a significant urban design and active transport mandate for the project?
The T2D ‘Urban Design Strategy’ is an overarching document that sets out the vision, principles and objectives that must be achieved in the realisation of the mega-project. Amongst what is relevant to cycling, the most obvious outcomes are the overpasses that cross the spaghetti-moat of roadway from east to west. Overpasses aren’t the best active travel infrastructure; they benefit car drivers first and foremost by forcing people walking and cycling to climb and descend circuitous ramps so that cars can travel uninterrupted. However, considering how difficult it is to cross South Road currently, any improvement will be welcome.
In addition to the overpasses, the Urban Design Strategy shows continuous Active Travel Links on both sides of the roadway for all of the sections affected by this round of works. Furthermore, Strategy has relevant performance requirements that outline how these active travel links should function, including:
- Verges must be wide enough to accommodate walking and cycling paths and trees.
- These paths must have continuous treatment over the local and collector roads they cross.
- Pedestrian and cycle movement should be prioritised over vehicular movements on key routes.
All this is to say, the T2D project has the real potential to improve Adelaide’s cycling network, even as its efforts to improve car traffic are inevitably doomed to fail. To that end, Unley BUG has teamed up with Bike Adelaide to reach out to the T2D project team to understand more about the concrete plans for active travel. As we hear more, we’ll report back to our members.
Cyclists of Unley
The Unley BUG has been running a project to catalogue and share the stories of the wonderful and diverse people who cycle in Unley. By sharing some of these stories, we hope to show the wider community that ‘cyclists’ are really just everyday people.
So, whether you ride to work of for leisure, to take your children to school (or if you ride yourself there!), to the shops or to race on the weekends, we want to hear from you!
Check out some of the diverse and wonderful people who cycle in Unley here!
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