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MEDIA OPINION - 18th MAY 2005

“CAR CULTURE KILLING US"
Frank Wallner

Roads are frightening enough places for the average car driver but spare a thought for the cyclist. If no cycle path is available they are required to ride on the road and take their chances with all manner of oversized and lethal vehicles. And when the two meet, cyclists always come off second best. At least two cyclists were hit and seriously injured last week in the Illawarra and in Australia an average of 35 cyclists are killed and about 2500 seriously injured each year. In South Australia recently, a drunk motorist ran over a cyclist leaving him to die on the roadside and received only a $3100 fine and 12 month good behaviour bond. A recent survey indicates that aggressive driving and road rage incidents appear to be on the rise. Our roads have always been dangerous places but for regular cyclists they are deadly.

So does that mean we shouldn’t be cycling? No, but we must urgently turn around the car culture which is polluting our air, strangling our cities, making us fatter, more angry and stressed. As urban density increases, creating cycle friendly cities which integrate with efficient public transport should be put high on the government agenda. Getting commuters out of their lethal weapons and onto their bikes will contribute to the creation of less polluted, healthier, less stressed and more friendly places.

Unfortunately the construction of cycleways falls to the bottom of the transport priority list. The motor car rules and we spend hundreds of billions on road improvements each year while cycleways barely rate a mention. Provision of serious funding to develop adequate cycling infrastructure falls between the government gaps. The federally established Australian Bicycle Council has recently released a draft national cycling strategy which has numerous worthwhile ideas but is without a funding commitment and strangely states that “it is not a strategy of the Australian Government (Commonwealth)". At state and local government levels, Councils, Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) Department of Transport and Dept. of Infrastructure, Planning and Natural Resources (DIPNR) don’t really see it as their “core business” which leaves the development of cycling infrastructure as an end of financial year afterthought. All Illawarra Councils have cycleway plans but funding is inadequate for the type of serious work required. It would also seem that new road projects do not automatically consider and incorporate provisions for cyclists. The planning for cycleways also tends to be for tourists and weekend users rather than ‘active commuters’. This means that the safest route does not necessarily meet the needs of locals who want to commute from suburbs which are not linked to the cycleways. Laws also prevent cyclists from riding on safer and more efficient routes such as on footpaths and parts of major highways eg. the F6 freeway. Not being able to use footpaths when alternative safe cycling routes are inadequate does nothing but place cyclists onto the crumbly edges of busy roads.

It is unrealistic to expect a network of purpose built cycleways throughout the region but there are compromise alternatives. Some Councils have implemented coloured road markings which distinguishes parts of roads for cyclists. It is also unrealistic to expect everyone to start riding tomorrow. Life is busy, kids need to be picked up and dropped off and for many people distances from home to work seem too long. However, about 50% of car trips in Australia’s largest cities are less than 5 kilometres - a cycling distance which is realistic for many people to achieve in a reasonable time.

With fuel prices on the rise, huge opportunities exist to get people onto bikes and also into public transport but there needs to be some serious changes made to how we go about creating a cycle friendly cities and towns. In the meantime there are some immediate steps which can be taken to improve cycling friendliness including:

- removing the fee charged for carrying a bike onto public transport
- removing the law which denies cyclists the right to ride on footpaths
- Establishing an urgent works program to fix some of the cycling black spots identified by regular cycle commuters
- Beginning a program of coloured cycle lanes to distinguish cycle routes at black spots
- Establishing automated bike hire and locker facilities at key public transport interchanges
- Workplaces ensuring there are adequate change room facilities for active commuters
- Driver education programs to understand the rights of cyclists and also how to drive safely sharing the road with cyclists.

We can create cities which are less dependent on private cars but we need urgent, committed action by all levels of government to support the massive culture changes required. In his recent visit to Wollongong, David Suzuki gave us the 10 most effective ways we can live more sustainably and 3 of these related to the way we transport ourselves.