Cycling advocates were elated when Maribyrnong City councillors voted to approve a two-year trial of a 3.5-kilometre bike lane along Summerhill and Rosamond roads, a busy arterial between Footscray and Maribyrnong.
But the joy was short-lived after mayor Sarah Carter moved a rescission motion the following day, citing concerns the wider community was not consulted in the ambitious plan put forward by Greens councillor Bernadette Thomas.
Footscray resident Callum Steele opposes a controversial pop-up bike lane plan by Maribyrnong council that would scrap both sides of street parking on Summerhill Road.Credit: Luis Ascui
It’s the latest example of a Melbourne council struggling to balance promoting cycling as a safe and climate-friendly form of transport with the backlash from residents complaining that new bike lanes will take away their parking or road space.
“What we are seeing is a clash between road works and cycling policy,” Carter said.
“This is a new challenge for councils across Melbourne trying to retrofit old narrow infrastructure to suit bike paths.”
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Carter said she supported bike safety in the municipality, but the ad-hoc way the Summerhill Road to Rosamond Road project was pushed through without community consultation was not the way to do it.
“The governance is just absolutely missing, because we don’t have all the information, and not a single resident has been consulted on the impacts,” she said.
In the northern suburbs, Merri-Bek City Council voted to remove a small section of separated bike lanes in Pascoe Vale earlier this month. Greens councillors are seeking to overturn that decision.
The City of Port Phillip successfully lobbied the state government to remove almost 40 kilometres of temporary bike lanes in St Kilda and other bayside suburbs earlier this year.
The City of Melbourne paused its CBD rollout after vocal opposition from some business figures - although 20 kilometres of bike lanes remain and there are plans to build 24 kilometres more by mid-2024.
Some of Melbourne’s dedicated bike lanes initially caused backlash from residents.Credit: Jason South
Meanwhile, 154 people have signed a petition opposing Stonnington Council’s plan to install speed cushions and road marking in Malvern to improve cyclist safety, with one resident saying they feared the “annoying noise” of cars going over speed humps.
Elliot Fishman, from the Institute for Sensible Transport, a Melbourne-based consulting firm that has worked on designing and implementing bike lanes, said councils often made poor decisions about infrastructure needed for safe cycling without disrupting other road users.
“There’s been a move toward protected bike lanes and they make sense in some areas. But it’s also the most space-intensive and the most cost-intensive option, so we need to look for opportunities for improving the bicycle network in some areas that don’t require that,” he said.
“Sometimes we go too far and we put protected bicycle infrastructure where it’s not needed. But we also have plenty of streets where we hold our hands and say: it’s too difficult - we’re not going to have bike infrastructure here, even though we’ve got higher levels of vehicle traffic.”
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Fishman said Canning Street in Carlton was one of the city’s most popular cycling routes in the city and an example of how local streets could be made bike-friendly without installing separated lanes. The street is divided by “modal filters” that stop cars using it as a thoroughfare.
Fitzroy and Collingwood’s backstreets had also been made bike-safe by lowering speed limits to 30km/h, rather than installing new lanes, he said.
Bicycle Network chief executive Alison McCormack said her advocacy group had worked with councils and the state government on bike lane projects for decades, and there was always an initial backlash.
“Once the projects are completed and the benefits are obvious, the hostility dissipates and the former opponents often become supporters,” McCormack said.
Councils were swayed too often by “loud objections of minority groups” and should instead listen to all areas of the community, she said.
“We have seen councils such as Port Phillip abandon support for separated bike lanes on the Shrine to Sea project despite it being endorsed by their own experts,” McCormack said.
Crystal Legacy, an associate professor of urban planning at Melbourne University, said the city badly needed more bike lanes to provide an alternative to driving, but lacked a citywide plan to ensure councils built the right projects in the right places to link up.
“At the moment, it’s just kind of a patchwork of different plans,” she said. “One of the key issues that we have in this state is that we don’t have an integrated transport plan that allows us to see the vision for metropolitan Melbourne, and that would include things like what’s the opportunity for cycling infrastructure.”
The state government started working on a network of “strategic cycling corridors” in 2015 linking the CBD and suburbs, but has made little progress delivering them, despite the support of the RACV, which says more cycling would reduce road congestion.
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Carter said that one solution to the council’s bike lanes angst is a local government transport strategy that would resolve the challenges before they arise in the planning stage.
Fishman said there was backlash against cycling projects that took away space for cars even in “bike Nirvanas”, such as the Netherlands, and leaders needed to stick to their guns and push ahead with important projects.
But poorly planned projects risk losing community support for cycling infrastructure, leaving councils and governments too afraid to build any more in the future, he said.
“The risk of putting in the wrong infrastructure is that you lose the goodwill of the community - there is a real risk in that, because protected bicycle infrastructure in Melbourne is still a relatively new concept,” he said.
”You don’t just want to install protected bike lanes, just so you can say at a council meeting: we’ve installed eight kilometres of protected bike lane. What you really want to say is: we’ve increased the proportion of trips done by bicycle from 3 per cent to 8 per cent, because that’s really the indicator that’s most important.“
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