canberra.bike
Tara Cheyne MLA, the Member for Ginninderra for ACT Labor, has sent canberra.bike two emails in the last month regarding the Kuringa Drive missing link, Belconnen. Quotes from her email and more information about Kuringa Drive are found below.
This is an update to Canberra.bike article on missing links. The original article has been revised.
As you know, 2020 is an election year and there is less than 100 days before the election. Get the candidates to commit to cycling infrastructure where you live.
Tara Cheyne is the local MLA for Belconnen has opened a survey for those living in Belconnen. Feel welcome to respond to it or contact your local candidates. I am sure you have similar issues in your electorate to those mentioned below.
There was an off-road bike path bypassing Mitchell on the Flemington Road. It was bulldozed to widen Flemington Road for the light rail. Unfortunately, the ACT Government forgot to replace it. After complaints, the ACT Government pledged to rebuild this missing link. It is still under construction.
Missing links is a term that describes gaps in the cycling network, and those gaps can be quite short. An example would be a 100 m of missing path that would connect two good bike paths. Without this short link, a cyclist may need to ride a great distance.
Filling the gap and building a cycling path to form a network does not need to be expensive and it is very worthwhile. The value of fixing the missing link far exceeds the construction costs as it makes the whole path network more attractive to cyclists.
Last updated: 1 July 2020. See also Kuringa Drive missing link.
Active travel has been on the cards for a while in the ACT. One of the earlier commitments to active travel was in the Parliamentary Agreement for the 8th Legislative Assembly for the Australian Capital Territory between the ACT Labor Party and ACT Greens.
Much has been achieved but much is still to be done due to the under investment cycling infrastructure in the nineties and noughties.
Below is an extract of this agreement relevant to active travel, including the commitment to the Molonglo Cycle Highway feasibility study. This new cycle highway is discussed further in another post. It is yet to be built.
