Cooks river Cycleway
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Cooks river Cycleway
Postby Stickybeak » Fri May 11, 2012 11:19 am
The easiest (meaning simplest) route seems to be Cooks River Cycleway but the guidebook suggests its difficult to maintain speed on the path - i want to average about 23-25 km/h.
Any thoughts on whether this is doable on the cycleway? I need to be in Strathfield by 8am.
Cheers for the input.
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Re: Cooks river Cycleway
Postby Strawburger » Fri May 11, 2012 11:47 am
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Re: Cooks river Cycleway
Postby Stickybeak » Fri May 11, 2012 11:54 am
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Re: Cooks river Cycleway
Postby Strawburger » Fri May 11, 2012 12:02 pm
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Re: Cooks river Cycleway
Postby Stickybeak » Fri May 11, 2012 12:07 pm
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Re: Cooks river Cycleway
Postby queequeg » Fri May 11, 2012 1:13 pm
Also, watch out for the Canterbury Rd Underpass. You'll know it when you see it!
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Re: Cooks river Cycleway
Postby Stickybeak » Fri May 11, 2012 1:26 pm
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Re: Cooks river Cycleway
Postby Strawburger » Fri May 11, 2012 2:11 pm
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Re: Cooks river Cycleway
Postby Stickybeak » Sat May 12, 2012 6:34 pm
apart from that: what a great track!!!!
Its fantastic being away from the cars for most of it - I loved it.
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Re: Cooks river Cycleway
Postby recumbenteer » Sat May 12, 2012 6:46 pm
... gotta run the gauntlet crossing Canterbury Rd
Come to think of it..... 'bent trike riders... yeh..we're a breed of our own.....Sooooo
where's OUR special dispensation LOL
Rotovelo Across Australia
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Cooks river Cycleway
Postby queequeg » Sat May 12, 2012 9:05 pm
See, I told you that you would know it when you saw itStickybeak wrote:You call that an underpass???????? You'd be safer riding blindfolded straight out onto Canterbury Road.
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Re: Cooks river Cycleway
Postby AndrewBurns » Sat May 12, 2012 10:25 pm
I have no problems keeping around 30kph on the cooks river path when commuting, average is lower because of road crossings but it's fairly wide and direct.
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Re: Cooks river Cycleway
Postby find_bruce » Sun May 13, 2012 1:29 pm
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Re: Cooks river Cycleway
Postby mikesbytes » Sun May 13, 2012 2:37 pm
http://app.strava.com/rides/8230814#150819746
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Re: Cooks river Cycleway
Postby wombatK » Sun May 13, 2012 3:07 pm
You've got around 20 km of good quality shared path, and this ridiculous choking point. It's not just the width - the height is problematic for taller peeps - even without the pipe intrusion.find_bruce wrote:Scary thing is that some kind soul has bent the railing out a bit to give you some more room. Made me glad that I had cut my bars down so they were 480mm wide
In terms of bang for your buck, I couldn't think of a better way to spend cycling infrastructure dollars.
Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us -Jerry Garcia
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Re: Cooks river Cycleway
Postby Nobody » Sun May 13, 2012 3:16 pm
I believe it is ~85cm wide at the top. I can get through there with 68cm bars on the MTB, so it's just perception that it's very narrow.find_bruce wrote:Scary thing is that some kind soul has bent the railing out a bit to give you some more room. Made me glad that I had cut my bars down so they were 480mm wide
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Re: Cooks river Cycleway
Postby AndrewBurns » Sun May 13, 2012 3:52 pm
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Re: Cooks river Cycleway
Postby Strawburger » Mon May 14, 2012 8:21 am
Sounds like a challenge there Mike!mikesbytes wrote:When the path is clear, you can get a good pace on it, but when there's traffic, you need to ride slower
http://app.strava.com/rides/8230814#150819746
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Re: Cooks river Cycleway
Postby fenn_paddler » Mon May 14, 2012 9:08 am
It's pretty common to come upon three abreast walkers around blind corners. If you treat it like a race it'll eventually end badly - even if you don't hit someone, it pisses off the other path users to see cyclists tearing along a narrow path. Much as I see on the bay run on a regular basis.
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Re: Cooks river Cycleway
Postby Nobody » Mon May 14, 2012 9:46 am
I agree with the warning. However, it depends on the day of the week, the time of day and the part of the path. There are many blind corners and you need to know where they are. It is obviously foolhardy to go fast on a path you don't know well. As for three abreast walkers, that's just rude on a narrow, shared, two way path. But then there are often grass areas to pass if necessary. Another problem is two abreast recreational MTBs taking up most of the path width.fenn_paddler wrote:It's a shared use path. I think anything over 28 kmh is foolhardy (and that speed only on the open straights).
It's pretty common to come upon three abreast walkers around blind corners. If you treat it like a race it'll eventually end badly - even if you don't hit someone, it pisses off the other path users to see cyclists tearing along a narrow path. Much as I see on the bay run on a regular basis.
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Re: Cooks river Cycleway
Postby Strawburger » Mon May 14, 2012 11:00 am
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Re: Cooks river Cycleway
Postby Stickybeak » Mon May 14, 2012 8:03 pm
Allowing for all that surely it would cost very little to drop the path a little and make it wider - or even just to make it wider: if that were solved it would be hard to fault the track. I hope its well used by commuters.
I wish there were more like it.
Its connection with Homebush is a bit iffy but the Strathfield streets between the 2 would be perfect for cycle lanes so I'm a bit bemused at their absence: i think bike riders are still seen by most as the enemy.
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Re: Cooks river Cycleway
Postby wombatK » Mon May 14, 2012 10:13 pm
I can remember that Canterbury Rd has been flooded on very rare occasions - not due to the river rising, but rather drains being blocked on the road. In our recent very heavy rain, the floodwaters came nowhere near to the pathway level. Dropping it 30 cm or so and installing some Al decking over the river, like that on the Parramatta River at Melrose Park, would give a pretty good result.Stickybeak wrote:I had a bit better look at it - I liked the path so much I did it on Sunday early: I realise there is a river flowing past, its tidal and half of Sydney drains into it so it may weel be prone to a risk of flooding - not that I can remember Canterbury Road ever being at risk of being cut from flooding.
Allowing for all that surely it would cost very little to drop the path a little and make it wider - or even just to make it wider: if that were solved it would be hard to fault the track.
You're right about the Strathfield end. Some improvements there would be easy to achieve. One I'd like to see is to replace the chicanes on the M4 overpass bridge with something that's not nigh on impossible to get through without scraping your derailleur's against the posts.
Cheers
Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us -Jerry Garcia
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Re: Cooks river Cycleway
Postby queequeg » Mon May 14, 2012 10:27 pm
The underpass at Tempe (under the rail bridge) is prone to Tidal flooding. You don't really want to be riding your bike through all that salt water, especially in a King Tide!Stickybeak wrote:I had a bit better look at it - I liked the path so much I did it on Sunday early: I realise there is a river flowing past, its tidal and half of Sydney drains into it so it may weel be prone to a risk of flooding - not that I can remember Canterbury Road ever being at risk of being cut from flooding.
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