Much talk here about speed limits for cyclists but I’ll mention the issue of speed limits for motor vehicles and the impact that the relatively high urban road speed limits in Victoria have on intimidating cyclists, potential cyclists and pedestrians.
....and no mention of vehicle speed limits in the NSW article linked to above...
“A spokesman for Transport for NSW said there was currently no plans to amend the rules prohibiting 12-year-olds from riding on the footpath and that they were instead looking at different solutions including shared paths and bike lanes.”
Been thinking about this as my experience of riding to school with my daughter when she was at primary didn’t really make me a fan of riding on the footpath....
Take away the close passes and must get in fronts and add in blind reversing from drives, urgent turns into service stations, office car parks and drive thru’s. Pedestrians exiting shops, people waiting for trams. Get some driver confusion on needing to give way when turning into side roads...”it’s cyclist – no I won’t....there’s a child...yes I will”
also I like walking to the shops and walking the dog and find that I do have to give way to cyclists on the footpath as they are often too narrow or cluttered to allow parties to pass easily
Thinking back we ended up riding some of the way on quiet 40km/hr limited residential streets and only using the path on “busy main roads” that is roads with 60km/hr speed limits (read as target). My feeling is that any speed limit above the “norm” indicates to drivers that they have priority. (full stop)
At the weekend I found myself riding 50m or so along the footpath to reach a crossing at a highway intersection having come out of a quiet residential road the wrong side of the road to safely access the on road cycle lane and yesterday walking the dog through St Kilda at rush hour I saw a lot of cyclists using the path to link on road and off road cycle routes.
Here’s an example from St Kilda of a typical road layout on a 60km/hr limited highway and this is the type of road layout that you see more cautious cyclists take to the path to avoid :
And possibly sensibly so?....impacts at 60km/hr have a very poor outcome for pedestrians and cyclists:
(source 20isplenty "20mph is plenty" is a sort of successful UK based campaign)
Drop the speed limit to 40km/hr and you still have the problem that drivers will fail to look for cyclists and choose to ignore their rights but at least the outcomes of collisions may be less devastating
As to other States.... suspect it works because of the relatively low use of bicycles for utility transport ... once you start upping the mix then taking away space from those that have the least makes no sense to me.
Try using Southbank as example of how well higher volumes of cyclists and ped’s mix and see if there are any takers?
To conclude... my vote would be allow cycling on the footpath but only when the posted (or unposted) speed limit is higher than 40km/hr
Should go hand in hand in hand with an extension of 40km/hr zones and education for drivers on how to safely enter and exit premises when they have to cross the footpath.
And I’ve no idea on how to deal with cyclists using the footpath and priority crossing side roads .....guess the simple solution is the default: Cyclists give way to turning cars? After all cyclists should give way to everything and as many drivers seem to think the give priority to pedestrians crossing a side road rule only applies at signalised junctions might as well do away with it at the same time as it would be safer for pedestrians (no please don’t).
None of this addresses the issues that should be addressed of course – road space use, driving culture and driving attitude but if it works and encourage a few more people to cycle then that can only be a good thing, how to campaign for it?
edit erroneous urls to pic links removed