The local festival is all about dreaming ideas for a better Brisbane, creating greater public involvement and understanding of how urban places are designed, building pride and interest in Brisbane’s places and generally livening up our city.

Bikes have a big role to play in making cities’ public spaces more attractive and functional, by helping protect them from being completely overwhelmed by ever-expanding roads and numbers of motor vehicles, and by helping people move between and within public spaces (while still allowing them to interact with them and with each other).

The festival includes several free events based around bikes. It incorporated this month’s Lazy Sunday Cycle last weekend, and tomorrow includes We Like Bikes, “an afternoon
of live entertainment, workshops and competitions” at the Teneriffe bikeway, organised by Brisbane City Council. The event starts at noon and runs all afternoon. More details are available on Faster Louder, Concrete Playground and Facebook.

This Friday, 25 May is the Style Over Speed bike ride, a casual ride around town in stylish clothes. Meet at 5 pm in King George Square and join the group to ride over to West End before heading back to Brew Cafe and Wine Bar in Burnett Lane. More details are available on Facebook.

The detour will be up to Sandgate Road, and across at the traffic lights. Signage will be in place, and traffic controllers will be on site.

For further information, contact Airport Link on 1800 721 783.

A traffic controller will be present when necessary, to allow work vehicles to use the bikeway to move between Victoria Street and the rear of the building. Disruption to the bikeway is expected to be minimal.

Approximate location of the pipe.

The pipe will meet the bikeway near the pedestrian/cycle overpass, and run alongside it to Dean Street.

The work will involve digging a narrow trench along the side of the bike path, into which the pipe will be laid. The trench will be dug in 60 metre sections, and will be filled or covered out of hours.

The path will remain open while work is in progress. Transcity advises that in some situations it might require cyclists to dismount, but that this is unlikely.

Work will be undertaken between 8:30 am and 4:00 pm, Monday to Saturday. Transcity estimates the overall project (including tunnelling under the freeway) will take four weeks to complete, and that the section affecting the bikeway is expected to start on Monday, 14 May.

Map showing the road closure and motorists' detour

The adjacent shared path (from the pedestrian/cycle overpass) will remain open for most of this time, but traffic controllers will hold pedestrians and cyclists for short periods when materials are being transferred across the bikeway. Over the two days there are expected to be 12 such closures of about 5-10 minutes each, spaced approximately two hours apart.

• Temporary weekend diversion Mt Coot-tha Road – northbound ( PDF, 1 MB)

The jerseys are available in a variety of sizes in both men’s and women’s versions. They cost $100, and come in a choice of two colours: orange or blue.

The two colours: blue and orange. (Click for full resolution PDFs)

The jerseys are Body Torque‘s BT644SS (men’s) and BT634SS (women’s), and feature reflective piping and a full zip on the middle pocket. These two “bonus” features will provide additional safety and convenience for riders as they are out and about riding around town.

If you would like a jersey please email your order (including gender, size and colour) to John Lister at john@cbdbug.org.au by Sunday, 13 May. The jerseys will take 4 – 6 weeks to be made.

John has a full range of sample sizes ‘in stock’ so contact him if you would like to try one on, or to check out the technical aspects of the jerseys.

Thanks to John for picking this up off the backburner.

We wrote to the three candidates for the Ward in tomorrow’s Brisbane City Council election seeking their views and support for a more timely reconstruction of this important piece of inner-city transport infrastructure. ALP candidate Heather Beattie and Greens candidate Rachael Jacobs both responded promptly, expressing their concern about the delay, and their intentions to try to bring forward reconstruction. We have not yet received a response from LNP candidate Vicki Howard.

• Letter to Vicki Howard (LNP) — no response yet
• Letter to Heather Beattie (ALP) — response ( PDF, 262 kB)
• Letter to Rachael Jacobs (Greens) — response ( PDF, 33 kB)

• Liberal National Party
• Australian Labor Party
• The Greens
• Australian Sex Party
• Chris Carson (Independent)

Or you can just skip to our assessment.

Liberal National Party

The Liberal National Party’s ‘Team Quirk’ has announced a Better Bikeways 4 Brisbane policy including $120 million in bikeway funding over four years, with a focus on building a network connecting commuters to not only the CBD and Fortitude Valley but seven other major employment areas:

• Australia Trade Coast (Brisbane Airport north of the river through to Port of Brisbane south of the river)
• Toowong/ Indooroopilly/ St Lucia
• North-East Industrial Corridor (Nudgee/ Banyo/ Boondall/ Brisbane Airport)
• Chermside
• South-West Industrial Corridor (Rocklea/ Darra/ Oxley/ Inala/ Richlands)
• Griffith University/ Mt Gravatt
• South Brisbane/ Woolloongabba

The policy also includes a programme to improve connections to suburban shopping centres and transport hubs, as well as an effort to improve safety by upgrading cycling ‘black spots’ and by establishing a joint taskforce with the police to ‘tackle inappropriate behaviour on bikepaths’.

• Team Quirk promises record $120m bikeway investment

Australian Labor Party

The Australian Labor Party’s lord mayoral candidate Ray Smith has released a Five Point Plan for Better Brisbane Bikeways, consisting of:

1. $100m for bikeway infrastructure,
2. establishment of a formal BUG steering committee
3. $600k for a roving team to address minor bikeway maintenance issues,
4. $2m (of the $100m) to investigate one green bridge, and
5. $280k for installation of bikeway facilities such as electronic bike counters and water fountains

Although it is not covered in his policy, Mr Smith has consistently indicated that he will remove BCC funding for its CityCycle bike share scheme.

• Ray Smith’s Five Point Plan for Better Brisbane Bikeways

The Greens

The Greens have not entered the election promise bidding war, but have stuck with the same, integrated transport policy as at the state election a few weeks ago.

The Greens have also released a background paper on transport options for Brisbane, which starts with a remarkably familiar section entitled ‘Build it and they will come – the importance of cycle infrastructure’. We certainly appreciate the flattery but, more importantly, the indication that the Greens share CBD BUG’s views on the value of cycling infrastructure.

• Background paper on Greens transport option for Brisbane City
• Greens Transport Vision for Brisbane Fewer cars, Less Pollution and More Choice
• Greens Transport Policy

Australian Sex Party

The Australian Sex Party has not released any cycling or general transport policies that we are aware of.

Chris Carson (Independent)

Independent lord mayoral candidate Chris Carson has been quite a wildcard for cyclists this election. Campaigning on a platform of reducing conflict on the road, he has put forward some quite controversial policies ranging from banning cyclists from major roads in peak times, to banning the use of motor vehicles for one day each year. He’s also joined the major parties’ bidding war in promising $300 million for pedestrian and cycling infrastructure.

Assessment

The promises by the LNP and ALP to increase or maintain the current level of investment in cycling infrastructure are very welcome, as are the other aspects of the policies, and the announcements supporting greater use of public transport and walking.

However, it’s important to keep these promises in perspective. BCC budget documents indicate that in the current financial year 83.2% of Brisbane’s $1.274 billion transport budget will be spent on motorists, while only 15.1% will be spent on public transport and a miserly 1.7% will go to cycling and walking. This is on top of money to be spent on top of paying off the massive debts from constructing the Clem7 and Legacy Way tunnels plus the Go Between Bridge under the Trans Apex program, leaving little room for any additional transport spending. Both parties have also announced major new road spending aimed primarily at motorists, with little or no cohesion between their roads policies and their cycling policies despite the huge and obvious overlap between the two.

The Greens have not engaged in the same battle of election promises as the two larger parties, but their integrated transport policy more clearly embraces cycling as a first-class part of the transport mix. Their background paper promises physically separated bike lanes on every major street in the CBD, which would be a huge leap forward in making the bicycle a safe and attractive way to get around the city.

While Mr Carson clearly has some important concerns and interesting ideas about how to make the roads safer for everybody, his proposal to ban bicycles from major roads at peak times fails to recognise that bicycles are a valid (and efficient) mode of transport, and would be disastrous for many commuting cyclists.

You can also read a more detailed summary of the two major parties’ transport election commitments ( PDF, 29 kB).

Mr Carson has made cycling a key part of his platform, with stated aims to reduce conflict and improve safety for all road users, and to reduce the number of cars on the road. Although his statements are generally positive for cycling his policy currently includes a severely misguided proposal to ban bicycles from major roads in peak times.

Mr Carson also weighed into the cycle infrastructure funding bidding competition this week with a promise of combined pedestrian and cycle infrastructure funding of $300 million (over four years), which we understand includes $100 million for improving pedestrian and cycle mobility in the inner city, and $100 million for bike paths across the rest of the city.

This afternoon Mr Carson announced a ‘cycling rally’ to be held this weekend:

At this stage it’s not clear what form this rally is intended to take, or how antagonistic or constructive it will be. CBD BUG is not endorsing the rally, but members can of course make their own decisions about whether (and how) to participate.

As an independent (and previously unknown) candidate Mr Carson’s chances in the election are not high, but we hope he can create some additional public and political pressure on the established parties to better support and prioritise cycling as a mode of transport.