Planning minister backpedals on bike-path war

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g-boaf
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Planning minister backpedals on bike-path war

Postby g-boaf » Sun Nov 18, 2012 8:32 pm

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/nation ... 6518809143" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
THE O'Farrell government is backpedalling on its hardline stance against Clover Moore's Sydney bike lanes - two months after they forced her out of office.

Planning Minister Brad Hazzard has declared a truce over the controversial scheme, admitting the lanes were actually an important transport option for Sydney's future.

Mr Hazzard's comments follow an eight-day ministerial trip to Vancouver, Portland, Seattle and New York with Planning Director-General Sam Haddad - all cities that have successful bike lanes.

"I'm prepared to stick my neck out here," Mr Hazzard told The Sunday Telegraph. "With increasing densities of cities, we have to look at all options. You have to start somewhere, and they are working. I can understand the angst because there is always the debate about cars versus pedestrians and cyclists. But, in modern cities around the world, they are embracing alternatives to having cars clog the city.
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"The lesson from eight hectic days is we need to be open to these ideas."

Mr Hazzard said he would not be diving head first into any "anti-bike or anti-pedestrian debates" and that Vancouver had increased the number of visitors despite "drastically reducing" the number of cars in the city.

"They've done that by increasing access for pedestrians, cyclists and public transport," Mr Hazzard said.

His comments follow years of hostility from the NSW Coalition toward Clover Moore's bike lanes, which many believe sparked the "get Clover" laws, banning MPs from also serving on local councils.
The planning minister has backed away from the NSW Government "jihad" against bike paths, suggesting that they are an important transport option for the city. :D Alan Jones and others will be fuming!

It's a breathtaking backdown after all the vitriol from the Liberals and Living Sydney over Clover's city bike-lanes. I'm quite hopeful that this is a sign of smarter things to come from the government, especially since they do have at least one cyclist within the cabinet.

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Re: Planning minister backpedals on bike-path war

Postby find_bruce » Sun Nov 18, 2012 9:12 pm

Alan who ?? :wink:

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Re: Planning minister backpedals on bike-path war

Postby r2160 » Sun Nov 18, 2012 9:14 pm

wow, and all it took was a $100,000 trip and a beating about the head and body of the planning minister with facts

who would have thought . . .

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Re: Planning minister backpedals on bike-path war

Postby bigfriendlyvegan » Sun Nov 18, 2012 11:39 pm

You mean someone actually learned something from one of these "research" trips? If so, I'm impressed. By the sound of those cities, he seems to have been sent to actually look at bike friendly cities.

It's worrying to think that there is someone in government who is actually doing some thinking. I'm sure it can't be real. There must be a catch somewhere.

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Re: Planning minister backpedals on bike-path war

Postby hiflange » Sun Nov 18, 2012 11:50 pm

What did my dad always tell me to do? - "Put brain in gear before opening mouth."

Imagine the value we'd get if we managed to vote for people who didn't have to have this level of on the job training!

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Re: Planning minister backpedals on bike-path war

Postby Alien27 » Mon Nov 19, 2012 9:05 am

Not really surprising at all. They pander to the popular Alan Jones/News Corp bullcrap, but they dont actually have follow through. AJ and the Tele are that one eyed they are happy to ignore the fact that there is a bit of sensible back peddling going on. They need stuff to complain and be self righteous about. But once an issue is dead they move on to something else. They are not actually interested in traffic congestion, bullying, cyber trolls or any of the other horse shizzle they rave on about and certainly aren't the least bit interested in any real analysis of policy or outcomes so a back flip is irrelevant. They need division to create an issue and if there isn't a difference in policy between the City of Sydney, and both the major parties at State level the they will just move on to the next 'issue'.
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Re: Planning minister backpedals on bike-path war

Postby g-boaf » Mon Nov 19, 2012 10:09 am

The Telegraph this morning is running angry comments about the bike-paths again. :roll:

Well maybe not so angry, but suggesting that if there were more buses and light rail, there wouldn't need to be bike lanes/paths... :roll:

I love the comments above! :lol: If I happen to see Hazzard, I'll have a chat with him about this stuff, as we have a right to do being voters. I hope he will actually follow through with this common sense approach. Heaven forbid, I might actually vote for them if they actually start building these. :shock:

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Re: Planning minister backpedals on bike-path war

Postby biker jk » Mon Nov 19, 2012 2:59 pm

g-boaf wrote:The Telegraph this morning is running angry comments about the bike-paths again. :roll:

Well maybe not so angry, but suggesting that if there were more buses and light rail, there wouldn't need to be bike lanes/paths... :roll:

I love the comments above! :lol: If I happen to see Hazzard, I'll have a chat with him about this stuff, as we have a right to do being voters. I hope he will actually follow through with this common sense approach. Heaven forbid, I might actually vote for them if they actually start building these. :shock:
The Liberal Party was trounced in the State seat of Sydney by an Independent endorsed by Clover Moore. There was certainly a backlash but not against bike lanes/paths, instead the backlash was against the Libs trash talking cycling infrastructure. I voted to teach them a lesson. The amount of advertising they sent to households pretending to be understanding of the residents' needs made my stomach turn. Proposing car friendly policies might win votes in the West but this was always a vote loser in the inner-city.

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Re: Planning minister backpedals on bike-path war

Postby g-boaf » Tue Nov 20, 2012 9:02 am

More on the transport dilemma:

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/meeting-shows ... 29mjz.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Interesting to see George Street shown with light rail and plenty of room for pedestrians and/or cyclists. Industry appears to back this option too, although it basically gets rid of cars, if it is implemented as shown.

That is the best option - it must be done, you can't have so many buses and cars in the city, they jam up the roads, especially the buses on Elizabeth Street leap-frogging each other in the morning.

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Re: Planning minister backpedals on bike-path war

Postby bigfriendlyvegan » Tue Nov 20, 2012 9:56 am

Did I spy a bike share system in that picture?

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Re: Planning minister backpedals on bike-path war

Postby find_bruce » Tue Nov 20, 2012 9:59 am

Turn George St into Pyrmont Bridge, yipee :roll:

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Re: Planning minister backpedals on bike-path war

Postby g-boaf » Tue Nov 20, 2012 12:42 pm

bigfriendlyvegan wrote:Did I spy a bike share system in that picture?
Probably just put there because it looks pretty. ;) I suspect they'll go with the plan to make underground bus tunnels instead because that will cost more and cause more disruption. :lol:
find_bruce wrote:Turn George St into Pyrmont Bridge, yipee :roll:
There are parallel streets that have traffic and bus mayhem, if you prefer that. What would you do instead of light-rail or bus-tunnels?

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Re: Planning minister backpedals on bike-path war

Postby george-bob » Tue Nov 20, 2012 1:16 pm

ooh, i like the look of a car-free george st! add a proper, dedicated bike lane (like bourke st) in there and we are all happy (except motorists) :D
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Re: Planning minister backpedals on bike-path war

Postby mikesbytes » Tue Nov 20, 2012 1:33 pm

It seems to me that the congestion in the bus lanes on George st is due to the taxi's.
If the R-1 rule is broken, what happens to N+1?

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Re: Planning minister backpedals on bike-path war

Postby gorilla monsoon » Thu Nov 22, 2012 4:34 pm

Funny you say that. I got a taxi through the Sydney CBD the other day and even the taxi driver was saying there are too many cars and TOO MANY TAXIS :shock: and that the state and city governments should be limiting the amount of vehicle travel within the city area. It got weirder: he reckoned single-occupant vehicles should be stopped from coming into the city.

I actually wondered what strange, parallel universe I had stumbled into.
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Re: Planning minister backpedals on bike-path war

Postby g-boaf » Thu Dec 06, 2012 7:24 am

gorilla monsoon wrote:Funny you say that. I got a taxi through the Sydney CBD the other day and even the taxi driver was saying there are too many cars and TOO MANY TAXIS :shock: and that the state and city governments should be limiting the amount of vehicle travel within the city area. It got weirder: he reckoned single-occupant vehicles should be stopped from coming into the city.

I actually wondered what strange, parallel universe I had stumbled into.
He's one of the ones I've been educating. :P

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Re: Planning minister backpedals on bike-path war

Postby find_bruce » Thu Dec 06, 2012 8:40 am

Agreeing with Taxi drivers is one of the warning signs of early onset dementia - better rush off & get tested before you end up listening to Alan Jones & there is no known cure for that :D

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Re: Planning minister backpedals on bike-path war

Postby Sydguy » Thu Dec 06, 2012 9:21 am

I like the idea for George Street - but I don't think I will have the patience to cycle on it. Pyrmont Bridge is fine, it is so short I slow right down, the only ire I feel is towards cyclists who I have seen hit peds then yell at said ped...

We are edging closer to a congestion tax. If nothing else that will make PT more attractive.

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Re: Planning minister backpedals on bike-path war

Postby g-boaf » Thu Dec 06, 2012 9:58 am

find_bruce wrote:Agreeing with Taxi drivers is one of the warning signs of early onset dementia - better rush off & get tested before you end up listening to Alan Jones & there is no known cure for that :D
Alan Jones! Never. :lol: I don't think I'd survive 1 minute of listening to his nonsense. :lol:

I do my best to try and educate them, but some of them still trot out the usual cyclist registration rubbish, though they have no answer for the fact that registration doesn't stop motor-vehicles from breaking the law. :D

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Re: Planning minister backpedals on bike-path war

Postby zero » Thu Dec 13, 2012 10:10 am

mikesbytes wrote:It seems to me that the congestion in the bus lanes on George st is due to the taxi's.
I'd say the congestion full stop is due to taxis. On a tuesday night, they could turn off the street lighting on George St and everyone would be able to see what they were doing in the glow of empty taxi signs.

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Re: Planning minister backpedals on bike-path war

Postby bigfriendlyvegan » Thu Dec 13, 2012 5:00 pm

zero wrote:
mikesbytes wrote:It seems to me that the congestion in the bus lanes on George st is due to the taxi's.
I'd say the congestion full stop is due to taxis. On a tuesday night, they could turn off the street lighting on George St and everyone would be able to see what they were doing in the glow of empty taxi signs.
I saw a taxi today that blatantly stopped in a no stopping zone to pick up a passenger. He had a huge line of buses and taxis behind him. Then, next to him, he had a bike cop. I've never seen a taxi be so respectful to a cyclist in my life!

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Re: Planning minister backpedals on bike-path war

Postby g-boaf » Fri Dec 14, 2012 11:33 am

Bike cops can issue penalties. And they have weapons. So they always get respect, nobody would dare to run them off the road or give them "brake test" like we saw happen in the moron motorist topic a while back.

We need a lot tougher penalties to force drivers to behave better. And the law could also toughen up on media personalities and others like them inciting hatred or writing provocative, hateful articles like that guy on the Gold Coast ranting about cyclists holding him up on his short 3km drive to go running with a friend.

Back to the original subject or similar to it:

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/opting-fo ... 2bcgi.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The light rail plan should be pushed a lot further, but in reality, we'll be lucky to see even this proposal go ahead given that elections will be occurring likely before it goes ahead.

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