Also In the inner city area of Brissy, why couldn't we look at closing a lane (one way traffic) and using the acquired space for people to use with bikes/ebikes/escooters etc. It separates foot traffic from motorised. Obviously these choices of lanes would be strategically chosen for best bang for buck.
this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024
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We actually did get that...on two streets. Elizabeth Street and Edward Street now have a bike lane with a physical barrier.
Unfortunately, it turns out that just one lane for two-way bike traffic is uncomfortably narrow, so ideally we need to be closing two lanes, which shouldn't be too much of an issue considering Elizabeth Street was 4 lanes before this anyway. And obviously having it on only two streets is pretty useless for creating an actual network for people to get around. Elizabeth Street is particularly ridiculous, because to get onto it at the southern end you've got to wait for two whole cycles to get from the southern end of William Street followed by crossing the almost-perpetually-empty eastern end of William Street in a two-stage crossing, and at the northern end of Elizabeth Street it randomly dumps you onto an island with nothing but a big fig tree on it, with nowhere else to continue on to safely.
And for pedestrians, in some areas they have plenty of space...in theory, but then the frequent advertising billboards taking up space on the footpath restrict how much you can move. Damn billboards that were first allowed to pay for Council's CityCycle initiative, but for some damn reason are allowed to stay up even though CityCycle has been axed.
So yeah, we definitely do need to be doing a whole lot more for active transport in the inner city. It's pretty abysmal at the moment.
Yeah agree it has to be done with a whole plan approach so that it runs seemlessly for the motorised user. As for the pedestrians in your comment I was more looking at separating the walker from the escooter world because they just don't gel well together. So if a pedestrian can walk and not fear being knocked over by someone on a motorised vehicle then all the better.
None of the council campaigns have really cut through for me this time around. They all seem a little batshit insane.
Would prefer additional lane added not removed, coro drive already sucks
coro drive already sucks
It sucks because of how many people are driving on it. You can't fix traffic by adding lanes—in fact, adding lanes ends up making traffic worse because the induced demand inevitably ends up meeting chokepoints at desired destinations.
If buses didn't get stuck in traffic, they would be a much more appealing option. Instead of taking twice as long as driving as they do now, they might end up being roughly equal in time, or even faster, which is exactly how any good public transport system should be.