News & Discussion: Cycling

[Kasey771]

Circus chimps could do a better job than the ACC. No wonder cycling is struggling to grow its modal share here.
Fighting such institutionalised opposition as seen at the ACC I’m surprised anybody bothers to cycle at all


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[[Shuz]]

ACC have colluded with fake media to block progress AGAIN. These scum should step aside and make way for new blood! The people want a bikeway, ACC should give them one!

[mshagg]

Abiad's just as big a piece of shit as Antic.

[Llessur2002]

Who votes these morons in? Am I right in thinking that most ACC councillors are elected on a handful of votes? I presume that Moran is a bit safer up in the ivory tower in North Adelaide but in Antic and Abiad's wards surely there are a couple of progressive city residents who could run in the next Council elections and oust these backward prats? Somebody? Anywhere?

Hopefully as the City's population grows so will the voting patterns of its residents. Young, professional inner-city apartment dwellers tend to be more on the progressive side...

[mshagg]

https://www.ecsa.sa.gov.au/elections/co ... on-reports

Enrolled electors around 24,000

Abiad: 687 votes
Antic: 758 votes
Moran: 1598 votes (area councillor as opposed to ward)

[Nathan]

Antic and Abiad would be largely on the back of business votes, rather than residents.

[mshagg]

Agreed. I assume the 24000 includes enrolled businesses - or "ratepayers" as Abiad like to call them.

[Llessur2002]

What irks me most is that, if I were a business owner in the CBD (especially a café owner as per the Flinders Street Project who appear to have been instrumental in the collation of the mammoth 8 signatures in their petition) and the Council told me that I was getting the premier east-west bikeway constructed outside my business with all of the associated streetscape improvements at the expense of a few car parking spaces I’d be over the bloody moon.

I could perhaps understand the skepticism from businesses out in the ‘burbs (i.e. along Goodwood Road etc) but smack bang in the middle of the CBD a café should surely see that there is so much more possibility for passing trade from pedestrians and cyclists than there would be from car drivers. Even if you drive to the CBD for work I doubt you’d use your car to go and grab a sandwich for lunch – you’d walk or, especially with the arrival of ofo and obike, cycle.

Is there something I am missing, or are these business owners really that blind to the possibilities of such a project?

[monotonehell]

I'm convinced that the last council election where we lost Yarwood (2014?) was an orchestrated ballot stuffing by certain business interests who were voting multiple times via their businesses and corporate officials against the spirit of the rules.

[Kasey771]

What irks me most is that, if I were a business owner in the CBD (especially a café owner as per the Flinders Street Project who appear to have been instrumental in the collation of the mammoth 8 signatures in their petition) and the Council told me that I was getting the premier east-west bikeway constructed outside my business with all of the associated streetscape improvements at the expense of a few car parking spaces I’d be over the bloody moon.

I could perhaps understand the skepticism from businesses out in the ‘burbs (i.e. along Goodwood Road etc) but smack bang in the middle of the CBD a café should surely see that there is so much more possibility for passing trade from pedestrians and cyclists than there would be from car drivers. Even if you drive to the CBD for work I doubt you’d use your car to go and grab a sandwich for lunch – you’d walk or, especially with the arrival of ofo and obike, cycle.

Is there something I am missing, or are these business owners really that blind to the possibilities of such a project?

As I see it there are 2 main factors working against this project:
1. there are still a significant number of Average Joes who read the local rag and believe what is written as the gospel truth. For the best part of 30 years they've been fed the line that Cyclists are freeloading lawbreaking, congestion causing roadtoads. Little better than suburban terrorists. When people like you and I advocate for improving cycling infrastructure on the basis of facts like studies (from across the globe) showing improved business opportunities for businesses adjacent to protected bike lanes we must sound like advocates for ISIS or the Nazis to them!
2. The ACC don't exactly have a good track record on cycling infrastructure(ie getting it right the first time)

Into that mix, it actually seems really easy for grubs like Antic and Abiad to push their anti-cycling agenda.

[omada]

How people with under 1000 votes can hold up major reform is beyond me, words like "kafkaesque", "surreal" and "only in Adelaide" come to mind.

Perhaps we need more progressive folk to run for council, Yarwood we miss you sir!

[mshagg]

Antic and Abiad are no friends of "ratepayers". Check out the flinders street project facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/theflindersstreetproject/

Seems they copped a fair bit of spray over a now-deleted post about their 8-man petition, with their explanation suggesting they were victims of the same campaign of misinformation that nearby Mario was duped into parroting.

With friends like Antic who throw you under the bus in their campaign against the bikeway, losing a couple of carparks starts to look pretty rosy.

[[Shuz]]

How people with under 1000 votes can hold up major reform is beyond me, words like "kafkaesque", "surreal" and "only in Adelaide" come to mind.

Perhaps we need more progressive folk to run for council, Yarwood we miss you sir!

The sooner we have quotas in place about needing a minimum percentage of primary votes (i.e 5% or 10%) to be able to be elected, the better off we'll be. Will help weed out scum like Antic and Abias.

[mshagg]

Not sure if anyone uses linear park west of the city, but the port road underpass has been a bit of a running saga. It fell into disrepair and the council (Charles Sturt's) response was to erect signs instructing people to dismount from their bikes (nb: we didn't). They re-did the timber a number of weeks ago and managed to make it 100000x times worse in the process, as subsequent warping of the planks has made the surface borderline unrideable on even a fairly forgiving bike.

An extract of an email I received from the bridge asset manager:

The decking boards that were replaced have now started to undergo shrinkage and cupping – as timber is a natural material this cannot be avoided. These minor issues have been identified and will go into our future maintenance/rehab program. I do agree that the timber planks are not great for rideability and in future years when the entire underpass is renewed/replaced timber will not be the choice for the decking.

tl;dr - if you use the port road underpass, get used to the surface or start using the road lol.

[Listy]

Not sure if anyone uses linear park west of the city, but the port road underpass has been a bit of a running saga. It fell into disrepair and the council (Charles Sturt's) response was to erect signs instructing people to dismount from their bikes (nb: we didn't). They re-did the timber a number of weeks ago and managed to make it 100000x times worse in the process, as subsequent warping of the planks has made the surface borderline unrideable on even a fairly forgiving bike.

An extract of an email I received from the bridge asset manager:

The decking boards that were replaced have now started to undergo shrinkage and cupping – as timber is a natural material this cannot be avoided. These minor issues have been identified and will go into our future maintenance/rehab program. I do agree that the timber planks are not great for rideability and in future years when the entire underpass is renewed/replaced timber will not be the choice for the decking.

tl;dr - if you use the port road underpass, get used to the surface or start using the road lol.

I use this underpass everyday, and 'not great for rideability' is a huge understatement! I doubt it will be replaced anytime soon though - the timber that was there previously was at least 20 years old so it could be quite a while before the new stuff gets replaced. Crossing on the surface isn't really worth it - there are 3 sets of lights to get from one side of Port Rd to the other, and they are not synced, so it can take 5-10 minutes. I don't see why the council didn't fix it properly from the outset - they had a large pool of state & federal money left over from the Holland St bridge repair which had to be spent on work like this.