Behind the sound wall on the City West Link (SYD NSW)

[WMH]

There was some discussion at the last IWC Bicycle Working Group meeting of a cycle route behind the sound wall along the northern side of the City West Link (CWL).

This would avoid the notorious hill in Lilyfield Road and offer a gradual climb eventually ending up crossing at James Street, then Norton Street then ducking behind the sound wall again to reach Derbyshire Road and emerging onto Lilyfield Road at the top of the Balmain Road ridge.

Alternatively you could stay on the CWL itself using the (diminutive) breakdown lane to get to Balmain Road (I do this) and benefiting from the favourable traffic light timings that the cars get. At Balmain Road you can rejoin Lilyfield Road (again a favourable traffic light timing) or do a RHT using the pedestrian crossing or a J-turn to travel south down Balmain Road.

Most of the route, at least from Charles Street to James Street and also the Norton to Derbyshire section is on (de facto) shared 2.5m wide path, but the western section between Canal Road and Charles Street is scrub. I did a some bush bashing today to measure the available path width in this section which travels behind the old army base (now Dept of Fine Arts, Legs on the Wall, Art Gallery storage, Opera House garbage transfer station) and the Billy Kids childcare centre. (You could see the plans below if this forum allowed pictures to be pasted).

There are three distinct sections. The western-most section is below CWL deck level, has no noise wall and is formed by the batter supporting the CWL. This would require leveling the foot of the batter and installing a chain wire fence along the top at the CWL. This section is about 10m wide and finishes at a chainwire fence where the noise wall starts about half way along the old arrny base southern boundary.

The middle section has a noise wall about 2.7m from the CWL kerb and the Dept of Fine Arts uses the noise wall as its boundary fence. At the narrowest point (at the rear of the Legs on the Wall building) there is at least 5m to the existing noise wall. I suspect that the Department is using a bit of RMS land at this point but anyway there is sufficient space if the noise wall was actually at the CWL kerb. The land in question is now level with the CWL deck and slopes up gently towards the east.

The eastern section is adjacent to the Billy Kids childcare centre and is the narrowest section but even here there is at least 1.3m even before the sound wall is moved. Billy Kids' front fence is built right to the noise wall in Charles Street but this would be partly on RMS land.
Summary: Once the noise wall is moved to be adjacent to the City West Link, as is the case for the section from Charles Street to James Street, there would be at least 2.5m available for a cycle path.

Gradients would be similar to the CWL and the route would bypass that hill and the slow traffic lights at James/Lilyfield. The James/CWL and Norton/CWL lights are much more favourable to east-west travel. The recent increase to three lanes on the CWL in this region has caused the speed limit to be reduced from 70 to 60kph and the lane squeezing finishes at James Street. Dropped kerbs exist at James and Norton and the section of footpath between the two could be made a shared path as few pedestrians use it.

The section of Lilyfield Road between Derbyshire Road and Balmain Road remains but might yet be avoided since there is railway land behind the back yards of the adjacent houses to the north of the rail cutting all the way along until the last house before Balmain Road. This one house might be purchased or perhaps a platform perhaps 12m long by 3m wide overhanging the cutting could be constructed. This would bring cyclists out at the northern end of the Balmain Road rail bridge and could link to an off-road continuation of the path along the northern side of the rail yard down to Catherine Street where the promised Westconnex rail yard bike path will start. This path will lead under Victoria Road to join the shared path to the Anzac Bridge.

This “Behind the Noise Wall” route combined with the foreshadowed Westconnex rail yard bike path would avoid all of Lilyfield Road and thus the ire of 400 local residents caused by (withdrawn) plans for the ill-fated Lilyfield Road Cycleway.

Bill Holliday
Lilyfield

[WMH]

Jumped the fence to take a look along the potential bike corridor beside the light rail cutting between Derbyshire and Balmain Roads: The corridor is about 7m wide at Derbyshire but narrows as you approach Balmain Road. I stopped at about the 2m width which is about 140m from the Balmain Road footpath as further on, because of the thick vegetation, I could not be sure of where the ground stopped.
From the other end, it seems the corridor is 1m wide with a 3m steep slope down to a ledge which is 3m horizontally from the back fence of the corner house. This ledge could easily support a steel framed bike path 3m or 4m wide.

[find_bruce]

I assume you are talking about the side opposite the bus terminal shown on this google satellite image

Alternatively do you have a url for the plans you refer to ?