Oct 30 '06 - 1403 W, 1 I - Vote Good + 11 :: Bad - 13 Freewheeling into the future
Published October 31, 2006 by The Age
Bayswater North Primary principal Leigh Johansen has encouraged
more students to cycle to school, below.
Photo: Eddie Jim
AU - Road rage and small children are a dangerous mix.
Just ask Bayswater North Primary School principal Leigh Johansen, told last year by Maroondah Council that if something wasn't done about the 340 children dropped off at his school by car every morning, someone would get hurt.
Of the 500 children at the school, 68 per cent were coming by car, creating gridlock morning and afternoon. The council, fearing a child would be hurt or killed by an exasperated driver, asked the school to close a bay where up to 30 cars queued each morning.
"It was a very unpopular decision with parents," Johansen says. "I was quite worried, because I felt it might (hurt) enrolments if parents thought our school was difficult to get to."
The enterprising principal turned a negative into a positive.
The school is in a flat area of Melbourne, with wide footpaths surrounding it and four supervised school crossings. Using the school newsletter and school assemblies, Johansen began to ask parents and children: "Have you considered riding to school?"
His optimism paid off. On a good day, the school's new bike shed is packed with up to 50 bikes. On most days during 2004, it held fewer than a dozen.
Johansen is convinced it is only the start and that eventually as many as half his students will ride or walk to school.
And the increase in cycling has done more than reduce traffic frustration. "Children who ride their bikes or walk to school have exercised and socialised and are much more ready to settle down in class, concentrate and learn," Johansen says.
Bayswater North Primary is not a rare example. At schools all over Melbourne, students are being enthusiastically pushed out of the car, onto their bikes and with luck away from the risk of obesity.
Bicycle Victoria considers it to be part of a major shift in the way we view bicycles and a hopeful sign of a more sustainable future. "We are mainstreaming bike riding," says Bicycle Victoria chief Harry Barber.
Riding to work is going through a similar transformation as riding to school. "The people who rode bikes 20 years ago were defined as cyclists: they were a commuter and making a statement or they were serious bike riders," says Barber. "They weren't just someone who had a bike."
It is no longer an extremist activity and one of the things helping to push people back on their bikes is a lack of time. "People are so busy that their time is not always the same," says Barber. "Saturday afternoons aren't free for netball, football or cricket any more. People fit in their activity when they can. Commuters figure if they ride to work, they don't have to go to gym."
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1.1 million bicycles were bought last year, and 988,000 new cars. The increase in bike riding (cycling numbers have risen 5 per cent a year over the past five years, Bicycle Victoria says) has led to the biggest-ever injection into cycling-related funding in Victoria's history.
In May's Transport and Liveability Statement, Premier Steve Bracks announced that $72 million would be spent over the next decade on the city's bicycle network. Under the strategy, more than 50 kilometres of on-road bike lanes will be developed each year in Melbourne and regional centres.
Last week, as part of the Ride- 2School strategy, the Premier promised $4 million for 4000 new school bikes, bike sheds and bike education, intended to encourage 34,000 Victorian primary school students to be more active. Bikes will be given to students as they leave primary school and enter secondary school, so they can continue riding after they have outgrown their early childhood bike. Kids from disadvantaged areas who can demonstrate a commitment to bike riding will be favoured.
The new funding is in addition to $4 million a year already spent on bike and pedestrian programs. All up, it will allow more of what Bicycle Victoria believes are the way of the future for Melbourne: "Copenhagen" bike lanes, dedicated on-road bike lanes that run inside the line of parked cars and are separated from car traffic by low concrete barriers.
The City of Melbourne has begun its first Copenhagen lanes (so-called because of their popularity in the Danish capital) on the northern end of Swanston Street. Eleven other routes into the city are primed for the same treatment.
Councils are also realising that they must link their bike lanes with those in neighbouring municipalities.
Port Phillip Council, next door to Melbourne Council, has also unveiled Copenhagen lane plans for Fitzroy Street in St Kilda and Cecil Street in South Melbourne. Along Fitzroy Street, the Copenhagen lane will reclaim one lane of traffic from motor vehicles — bold thinking and something we need more of, according to Melbourne councillor Fraser Brindley.
"Safe bike lanes are going to require the removal of car lanes," says Brindley. "No one has been prepared to sacrifice car space on the roads for bike space. But we now need to take road space away from cars for bikes."
And planners need to take bicycle parking as seriously as car parking, he says. "Bicycle parking and change facilities are not part of the planning scheme," says Brindley. "That is an archaic position."
He sees compulsory car parking as a madness that encourages driving and says it should be replaced by compulsory bicycle parking. It's a big call in a carobsessed town like Melbourne, where 52 per cent of trips are taken by car and only 4 per cent by bicycle. But it's not the only instance of planners giving the bike equal billing.
Melbourne City Council is considering a plan to replace car parking in front of Carlton's Lygon Court shopping centre with 26 bike racks, to avoid having chained bicycles getting in the way of pedestrians.
There is also a plan to extend April's successful Cyclovia day, when Moreland Council turned over Sydney Road exclusively to bicycles. Moreland and Melbourne councils are considering expanding Cyclovia next year to stretch from Sydney Road along Royal Parade and into the CBD.Melbourne City Council planning chair Catherine Ng wants to take it a step further and turn over the whole CBD to bikes for a day. "One Sunday a year, we could shut down the city and just give it over to cyclists to see what it was like," Cr Ng says. "It's pie in the sky now, but it warrants further investigation. We have ride-to-work day, this would be ride-to-play day."
But Ng also says cyclists need more education to reduce conflict with other road users and avoid incidents such as that in August, in which elderly pedestrian James Gould was hit and killed on Beach Road in Mentone.
"There are conflicts, between cars and bikes and between trams and cyclists, that I see every single day," says Ng. She wants more enforcement by police, and consideration given to licensing cyclists so that they can be easily identified if they break the road rules.
Bicycle Victoria wants questions about bicycle riders added to the car driving test, to increase awareness of cyclists' rights, and obligations, on the road.
Combining bike-riding with public transport is also contentious. With the football season over, Connex runs shorter trains on its weekend services and the Public Transport Users Association say bike riders are the first to be hurt.
"A weekend or two ago (they held) Around the Bay in a Day and Connex were running short trains, so a lot of cyclists simply couldn't get on," says PTUA president Daniel Bowen.
He would like to see bike racks on buses and discretion for drivers of the new low-floor trams to let bikes on when trams are empty. Connex has removed the rule that a bike requires a concession ticket.
Bicycle Victoria's Barber is optimistic about the future of cycling in Melbourne. "A lot of people say, ‘I rode once in Amsterdam, but I'd never ride here.' That won't (always be the case). Riding will just become part of people's transport diet."
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