An Australian municipal government has just discovered a quick and easy way to piss off an entire community.
A northern suburbs council that built an elaborate separated bike lane on a residential street has been forced back to the drawing board after furious motorists twice ripped out bollards that had reduced the width of the road.
The two-way bike lane, built for $85,000 at ratepayers' expense in the working-class suburb of Glenroy, has been indefinitely removed after the Moreland City Council decided it could not afford to keep putting the vandalised bollards back in place.
It will instead seek to design a different bike lane that Glenroy motorists will tolerate.
The one-kilometre, two-way bike lane was installed in June along Cardinal Road, which is used by 3000 cars a day, but within three weeks a row of bollards erected to keep vehicle traffic out of the lane had been removed.
Council staff replaced the bollards, but 95 per cent were driven over or ripped out again within two to three days.
Council then gave up on the fight and spent another $10,000 removing the lane completely.
A council report found that, "from a motorists' perspective the issue was that there was no longer room for two cars to pass adjacent to a parked vehicle".
There's more at the link.
Well, if it restricted a main thoroughfare so severely that cars got jammed up whenever someone parked, what did the council expect - rejoicing? Whose idea was this, anyway? Didn't anyone think to ask motorists what they thought about it before making their lives difficult?
(And I wonder how many bashed bollards will now be mounted on front bumpers as a symbol of victory?)
Peter
3 comments:
Just around the corner from my parent's house, and where I grew up. Cardinal road already has a bike path, as it runs beside the Northern Golf Course boundary with a great gravel path next to it.
"Whose idea was this, anyway? "
Oh, the usual suspects I'd guess.
Here in Little Rural Northern City our 'Traffic, Congestion and Urban Planning Officer' (I kid you not on his title) is ... a cyclist. He doesn't have a driving licence. he can't drive. He hates cars .... and he's the one they put in charge of designing the traffic flow patterns and road-works?!?
We have miles of cycle lanes here that take away parts of already narrow roads, others that take most of already narrow pavements, and traffic-lights set up to allow cyclists prioirty over cars and pedestrians so leaving them both stopped for hours at a time ... you couldn't make it up. The city is in one permanent gridlock ... and alsmost no one cycles because of the weather.
What's the betting some lycra clad pedal-pusher is behind this idiocy too, 'representing' the interests of his/her 'clan' ... stuff anybody else.
It's so disheartening when people don't recognize what's really good for them and make it difficult for their betters to regulate and plan their lives. (There must be a sarcasm font somewhere.)
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