canberra.bike
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.
June is usually budget time in the ACT. The 2020-21 ACT Budget has been postponed. Canberra.bike looks at the last years budget and what the coming budget could hold. In general, the investment in active travel infrastructure in the ACT is not well documented.
The construction of the Belconnen Bikeway started last year and some progress has been made. The separated bike and pedestrian paths along the old bus road are finished but not open. Construction has started on Emu Bank. The section through the University of Canberra is largely finished.
There has been an update on the ACT Government website for the new Belconnen Bikeway, which is now expected to be completed in late 2020. This is good news as the ACT Government does not update its websites for active travel projects all that often. As part of the COVID-19 Fast-track program, the ACT Government is now providing more information about cycling infrastructure projects. Check out the website for more information or visit the original project page.
The ACT Government has many active travel projects but only a small number are cycle paths. Of those there are dedicated pages on the ACT Government website providing information about them. Those pages are listed here.
Pedal Power made a submission for bike infrastructure to the ACT Budget. A reminder was sent to the ACT Government in March 2020 after the announcement of a COVID-19 stimulus package. Many of the projects in this submission would already be known to the ACT Government, as they were promised funding at the last federal election by a future Federal Labor government. Among the remainder are found promises from the last ACT election. Pedal Power ACT is notable as it has been consistently requesting the completion of the same projects. A project can be discussed for years before it is planned or built, and government commitment means little. The Kuringa Drive bike path between Barton Hwy to Kingsford Smith Dr is a good example of this.
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.
