Yay Adelaide City Council

For some time now, every time I crossed Pirie Street outside the Adelaide City Council Administration Centre I would stand and wonder why the groups of people on both sides of the street would have to wait for cars to pass only to watch them have to slow down and join the stationary traffic queue 20 metres down the road.

The wondering is over because at long last, the council has installed a pedestrian crossing:


Yay!

I would like to think it was because of some feedback I provided to the draft Integrated Movement Strategy but it wouldn't have been. A crossing there has been obviously missing for ages. Everybody would have suggested it. Now all we need is one outside the market entrance on Gouger Street - and probably a few other places.

This one even has little warning signs on the green bike lanes:


And just next to it, there is a new bike corral:


Good stuff. Keep it coming.

Gotta love the Germans

It would seem that in addition to having a highly successful 'mittelstand' manufacturing quality goods that the rest of the world wants, running a superb railway system, knowing how to use an Autobahn properly despite no speed limits in places and single-handedly paying to keep Europe afloat, the Germans also know a little bit about cycling.

The Mitteldeutscherrundfunk (MDR) has a show called 'Exakt' which recently had a short segment about cycling. The segment is called 'Wo und warum passieren die meisten Radunfälle?' or 'Where and when do most cycle accidents occur?' I would love to be able to embed it but it is very difficult so here is the link instead.



Often, foreign cycling films are still fun to watch because of the footage. However this one only shows the guy talking (not to the camera weirdly) and a bit of footage of him driving. It is what he says that is interesting. He answers a series of questions which pop up after each other. These are my favourite bits:

What are the most common cycle accidents?

He starts by saying that cycle accidents are many and varied. The type of accident generally determines who is at fault. One of the most common is the turning collision where a motorist crosses the path of the cyclist. In practically all of those cases, the motorist is at fault. Where two cyclists crash into each other, it is almost always because on of them is going in the wrong direction.

Do higher fines change cyclist behaviour?

Interestingly, he supports that. The problem is one of enforcement though. He likes the idea of bicycle police officers who can stop cyclists and talk with them about rules and actually understand things from their point of view. Sounds reasonable to me.

What sort of problems do cyclists experience in traffic?

He says, "they claim that traffic rules are not appropriate for cyclists and that the infrastructure is not designed with cyclists in mind. They are absolutely right!" 'Nuff said.

What do you think of the helmet law under discussion?

Er ... let's not go there. He's sceptical. He says there is very little evidence that a helmet law reduces injuries. In individual cases of course, depending on the injury, it makes a difference. But most accidents occur with other types of injury - chest and abdomen for example - and helmets do not do a great deal for them.

How high is the potential for aggression between cyclists and motorists?

He (quite rightly) doesn't think that motorists go out of their way to injure others. The problem, he says, is that motorists have very little understanding of what people on bicycles are going through. At this point, the speaker is in his car and he shows a good example of what he means. You can see the cyclist about to overtake a parked car and he talks about the necessity of taking the foot of the accelerator and waiting just a few seconds to give the cyclist space. It is that understanding that is often missing. It takes only a couple of seconds.

What do we learn from crashtests?

To cut a long story short, in the crash test that you see, he says the cyclist would likely not survive - helmet or no helmet. He talks about a common error where motorists pull out of a driveway across a cycle path and the need for quick reactions. Regrettably, this time he does not give a solution other than to point out the problem.

What technical possibilities are there to keep cyclists safe?

They are limited. He says there is very little that can be added to 'vulnerable' road users to help them. What there is must be added to the car. He is confident that there are solutions on the horizon. He accepts that slowing traffic down is one solution but says that it does not help with all problems such as cars pulling across a bike lane. As we all know though, there are known solutions to that problem - most obviously segregation by time or perhaps simply designing intersections properly?

It would be helpful if something similarly objective was broadcast or reported here. There seems to be no shortage of articles and reportss about supposed aggression, danger or lawlessness by people on bicycles but precious few that are properly investigative and informative. That is, articles and bulletins that actually give a balanced and objective viewpoint. They are pretty few and far between. Don't believe me? How's this? A car owner (quite rightly) gets a parking ticket for leaving his car on a grass verge instead of parking it in his driveway and it makes the news! Not only that, it's reported as a "push" to free up space in "narrow" streets. Thankfully a lot of the comments tell it like it is:

Stop whining.

Now imagine a bike user making the news because they are complaining about getting fined for riding on the pavement for part of their journey. No, neither can I.

Although embedding the video is too hard for me, a little bit of detective work can lead you to the mp4 file. Not sure if it's legal but you can find it here.

Change in one generation

From The Space Wasters - The architecture of Australian Misanthropy by Robert Nelson:

You can never let a child pedal a bike on the road because it is lethal. Suburban space disempowers anyone who does not drive a motorcar—which is the entire population of the young and much of the old—and it makes pedestrians dependent and resentful. The people who are not motorists or who cannot depend on a family chauffeur for their rides are condemned to long periods of waiting for buses on exposed corners and desolate slip roads, where they feel alienated. All too often, public transport is too remote because spread-out cities mean few and infrequent services. To lose a driver’s licence is to be excommunicated and this punishment is weighed as a strong penalty imposed against a crime. To walk in automotive space, which is nearly all Australian suburbs including many of the inner suburbs, means feeling estranged from the community; and indeed you cannot see the community in any manifestation on the streets. I call it antisocial space because it is worse than unfriendly but ferocious. On a bike, you are likely to be maimed and the alienation brings on a brooding dissatisfaction, a glum and defeated feeling, a damnation that might only be redeemed by the prospect of future car ownership.

Sooner or later we will surely realise where we have gone wrong.

Lax standards

Unless there is a high standard bicycle route hidden somewhere else, by my reckoning, Adelaide's CBD has one proper bike path. By proper, I mean it has an appropriate level of separation from motorised traffic given the volume of traffic. It is on Frome Street just north of North Terrace (where it ends). It starts at the end of the zoo and so in total it is about 500m long.

It has been there a couple of years now and is starting to look a little worse for wear. In places it has been resurfaced - poorly:


And along its length, tree routes are beginning to make for a bumpy ride:


In other countries it might be considered a bit of an embarrassment but it is the best we have.

It is in the same style as some German paths that in reality are part of the pavement and which are often the subject of complaints. This example is in Berlin:


and this one is in Cologne:


Pictures borrowed from Hamburgize
Our path is not too far from one of the entrances to the Linear Park route and so it likely gets traffic from there as well as the route through the parklands from Botanic Drive. I would hazard a guess that some people purposely make it part of their route into the city because of its design. I know I do.

Over the course of its life it has improved too. Now there is a proper treatment when it reaches North Terrace whereas before it would just come to an end on the pavement:


It also shows that we do not have to follow whatever set of design guidelines is in vogue. Instead, we can try new and different things and see if what has worked elsewhere could work here too, which in the case of the Frome Street lane, it plainly does. I am very pleased to see the English are trying what for them are new things although in reality they have been tried and tested elsewhere for decades.

Now that we've seen this working for a while and given its crumbling quality, is it not time for a bit of an upgrade? And an extension to other city streets while we're at it?

Clipsal Bowden Development

Back in 2008, our State Government bought a very large parcel of inner city land where the Clipsal factory used to be. It is on the corner of Park Terrace and Port Road in Bowden. The plan is for the site to be developed into Transport Oriented Development known as Bowden Village.

Rather than the usual style of development, which consists of carving up a piece of arable land and plonking showhomes on it, this is being carefully designed from the outset. Developers are required to follow specific design guidelines. Already, properties are for sale:



They include townhouses:



and 3-level terraces as well as others:



Already, you can see how the streets will look. They are built in such a way that slow driving is encouraged:



One of the artist's impressions shows a large bridge:



Whether it is pedestrian only rather than an awesome bike and pedestrian bridge is unclear. It is also not clear where it goes. Time will tell.

The whole thing is organised by a new agency called Renewal SA which is run by that clever fellow Fred Hansen from Portland Oregon. He was responsible for putting their public transport system (Tri-Met) on the map.

As I understand it, the development is one of the reasons the tramline was extended to the Entertainment Centre, although I think whoever planned that may have forgotten that there was already a railway station there - closer to the site than the tramstop is.

One of the reasons for developing the site close to transport is to give residents the choice of using modes of transport other than cars and potentially not to have to own a car at all if they wish. The tram's ok but it's pretty slow from the Entertainment Centre to the CBD. It's also a bit of a walk from the other side of the redevelopment. The train is faster but not all trains stop at Bowden station so you can have a bit of a wait. It also used to be a bit dingy but that has improved significantly since the Loose Caboose café opened there.

Given the development's proximity to the CBD, you have to wonder why cheaper forms of transport are not being considered (or at least don't appear to be). Just across the other side of Park Terrace begins a safe cycle route all the way into the city. Much of the way it is pretty wide and in places has already been upgraded:



And who would not want a view like this on their morning commute:



This fairly rudimentary map shows the development relative to the city along with the current bike and walking route in purple:



As I say, a lot of the work is done. The trick is tidying up the loose ends. That is, making it part of a wider network. Join it up to the development using either the bridge or a decent signalised crossing. And at the other end, make it join seemlessly to the major roads through the city - where decent protected paths will of course be in place by then (!). Half the work is done. You also of course need to ensure that developers accommodate all of this as well. It's one thing to be able to get home or to your destination but you also need somewhere safe and easy to put your bike once you get there.

There really is potential for this sort of thing all over the place.

The point is, you don't need to spend $100m on a tramway to provide a decent, economical (and very cheap) alternative to driving.


I should add that I stole the pictures of the townhouses and terraces from the pdf's I linked to. They're on the lifemoreinteresting website.

Also, if there are ever any plans to develop pedestrian and cycling links from Bowden to the city, they really need to work on the signalised crossing over Park Terrace that is next to the railway crossing there. I had to wait 4 mins and 50 secs after pressing the button!

An illustration

So there I was. It's 5.30. I am still at work on the wrong side of the Central Markets. I have to be at the Palace Nova on Rundle Street in time for a 6 o'clock movie. Don't have the bike. I'm in a suit.

In that situation, you have a choice. Taxi? Meh ... possibly but at that time of night, my slow wheezing jogging along Wright Street was faster than the line of cars going in my direction. In any event, you still have to get to Victoria Square to the cab rank and there's no guarantee of getting a cab. Even if you do, having to pay for it is a bit of an imposition, especially if you're a tight-arse.

The second option is the tram - from Victoria Square to Rundle Mall. It's slow and it really only saves you about 700m of the total 2½ km trip. Hardly worth it and a complete waste of time if you have to wait for longer than a minute.

I settled on walking/running. This is the route I ended up taking:


In the end, I just made it - hot, sweaty and puffed out. In fact, when I arrived, I did the decent thing and warned everyone I was smelly. I took off my jacket and the children said, "dad, dad, don't take off your jacket. You've got totally sweaty armpits."

Now this is one of the many illustrations that show the need for a decent bikeshare system - but with two qualifications. First, a quick comparison between Melbourne and Dublin shows that the one difference between the two (the dreaded "H" word) is a significant obstacle to spontaneous use. You would have to have an exemption for the system. Second, hiring bikes with our roads in their current state is a waste of time. Nobody in their right mind is spontaneously going to hire a bike to get across town if they have to dodge trucks and buses. That's really just another way of ending up with sweaty armpits.

In the childish wonderland that is in my head, there are bikehire docks across the CBD:


(From Wikimedia Commons)
They are connected by smooth wide bike lanes that are separated from fast-moving traffic and have their own lights at intersections.

People in suits, who are running late, can ride them 2½ km across town in 5 minutes. When they get to the Palace Nova, they dock the bike and walk in looking urbane and sophisticated - a bit like James Bond after he's had a fight.

You know it makes sense. Here's the alternative:

  (Not me but it might as well be. Borrowed from Bubblews)

Countdown Lights

In enlightened countries where pedestrians are treated with just a teensy bit of respect, they have traffic lights that tell pedestrians how much longer they have to wait. We have all stood on the side of the street, silently cursing while repeatedly pressing the button and pleading to be given permission to cross. A wait of three minutes can seem like an eternity - because we don't know when it will end. It's like a mild form of psychological torture.

If you have real time information about how long it will be before the lights change (or indeed how long it will be before the next bus), the pain is usually alleviated.

This is what they look like:

 
(Borrowed - hopefully legally - from a post on Twitter by Brooklyn Spoke)

And this is what we have:



They are on King William Street (Pirie Street intersection) and North Terrace so far (or at least those are the ones I have seen).

There is a subtle yet crucial difference between the two. The overseas ones tell you how long it will be before you can cross. Ours don't give you that information. Instead they give you a countdown telling you how much time you have left to scurry across the road.

It's like a silent Sergeant Major barking orders at you to get out of the way.

Nice idea. Poorly executed.