Paralysis through analysis: the ideas that progress can be halted by yet another study. ACT Transport knows what it needs to do for cycling with over a dozen studies since 2004, but never gets around to making the improvements. The recommendations are all too often never implemented. Take for example, the proposed Civic and Dickson bike path through Haig Park, which has been discussed for over a decade. Here is the history of cycling transport studies.
Tag Archives: Active Travel Framework
Submission contents
Canberra.bikes` submission for the Standing Committee on Planning, Transport and City Services. Making Canberra a city where we can cycle safely and easily, at any time, from 8-80 years. Here is the table of contents with links to the text.
Section 5: Active travel
A brief introduction of active travel at a non-technical level. This submission is not about the technical aspects of active travel, which is well documented in the ACT Active Travel Key Documents. Combined with Austroads Standards there is enough there to build a good network. We are not failing because of a lack of standards. Rather the problem lies elsewhere.
Taxonomy of active travel
The Active Travel Framework includes many abbreviations that are impossible to remember unless we understand the system from which they are derived. This article is not an introduction to active travel but serves to clarify the taxonomy of route types.
Ring fencing Molonglo 3
Molonglo 3 East is in an early stage of planning and the significance easily missed driving by. In the Planning Design Framework the ACT Government outlines what it does and does not want, however, the intention is to leave plenty of space for good urban planning.
Overview of Active Travel Key Documents
Active travel is not in one document but many. This makes it confusing to know where to find something. The ACT Government has a system and understanding it helps locate the key documents.
Building unrideable bike paths
Many of the problems we have with active travel are due to years and years and year of poor design. The Molonglo Valley is a good example. In Whitlam, the ACT Government is building a bike path with a gradient of 12.4% (200m, climb 24m). This is not compliant with the Austroads AGRD06A standard – and only determined and athletic types will love it.
Section 2.1 The UK approach to network design
We cannot make a baby without a baby-making machine.
Moving Canberra and the Conservation Council
Canberra.bike has hardly mentioned ACT Government 2019 Moving Canberra strategy because it added little to the active travel debate. The ACT Conservation Council responded to it in a well-written submission. Between 2015 and 2020 the problems of cycle infrastructure investment remain largely the same in the ACT.
Section 5.2 CBR Cycle Routes
Building a network of good cycle paths is not easy, but the ACT Government has a plan.
