[bikeqld] Bike NAZIs on Coro Drive

[Glen Fergus]

Just eyeballed the "detour".  Basically it's along the northern Coro
Drive footpath, although two outbound cyclists appeared to have been
directed to the southern Coro footpath by the traffic controller
while I was there.

Ian's photos on the wiki are of the southern footpath, which is
totally unsuitable for cycling IMO.  It's barely wide enough for a
ped.  They would have to lean hard against the fence to let an
oncoming bike pass.  Joggers are already using this route in numbers
because they're supposedly not allowed to run along the scaffold.

The northern footpath detour is better, but the path is barely 1m
wide in places and is already quite busy with pedestrians.  The
city-end access is signed via the tunnel, so that saves two of your
ped crossings.

I observe:

1.  Given that traffic counts show roughly twice as many bikes as
peds on the bikeway, why wouldn't you divert the peds to the
FOOTpath and let the bikes cycle straight through?  Is this the
Bicentennial Bikeway, or WALKWAY ?!!

2.  Amusingly, the detours appear to be in technical breach of
the Queensland Road Rules, for reasons outlined here before.  (The
argument goes that while there is no specific rule against footpath
cycling in Queensland, the rule that says that drivers (including
cyclist) must keep to the left side of the road still applies.  So
technically you can't cycle outbound on the northern Coro footpath,
nor inbound on the southern.)

3.  The scaffold detour is just on 2m wide, and is totally
unsuitable for thousands of ped and bike movements per day as
indicated by the traffic counts.  That would be enough to shut
the job down if I was running it.

4.  The flimsy paper "Cyclists Dismount" signs do not appear to
comply with the Road Rules or MUTCD, and so are unenforceable.
Ditto the "No Running or Jogging" signs.  I'd also venture that
a direction from a contract traffic controller is likely to be
unenforceable too.  So if you wanted to ride through, in theory
you probably could.  Expect abuse.

5.  The works they've started this afternoon appear to be some
simple excavation for a low retaining wall on the Coro side of
the path.  No obvious reason why this couldn't have been done as
night works, with a night detour or (better) night-only one-way
traffic control.  That would have saved a half kilometre of
scaffold, and much angst.

6.  I still don't know who the Contractor is.  Some try-hard
tiddler, I'd venture.

G.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: bikeqld-bounces at bikeqld.org.au 
> [mailto:bikeqld-bounces at bikeqld.org.au] On Behalf Of Christopher Biggs
> Sent: Thursday, 30 April 2009 12:35 PM
> To: entropic at iinet.net.au
> Cc: bikeqld at bikeqld.org.au
> Subject: Re: [bikeqld] Bike NAZIs on Coro Drive
> 
> 
> On 30 Apr 2009, at 11:32 AM, Daniel Young wrote:
> 
> > Hi Michael and all,
> >
> > Just one thing to note-  I have noticed previously that there are  
> > cycling "detour" signs up around this area, implying that the  
> > walkway can be avoided.  I haven't followed the detour, 
> does anybody  
> > know what it is?
> 
> The "detour" is go up the park Rd ramp, cross at lights (3 
> sets, walk  
> of course, don't ride), ride along the coro drive inbound-side  
> footpath to cribb st, cross again (dismount twice) down ramp 
> back onto  
> bicentennial jogway.
> 
> >   I assumed it would be something that involves cycling through  
> > Milton, then coming back to Coro Dr at a later point (obviously  
> > crossing (and dismounting)) at pedestrian lights to re-join the  
> > bikeway.  This might be brought up since you mentioned "the 
> lack of  
> > ANY options".
> 
> Yeah, in their eyes they've "provided" a detour (involving 5 
> separate  
> pedestrian crossings), so cries of "no option" will not get anyone  
> very far.
> 
> If I was still riding to the CBD every day, I'd give St Lucia a hard  
> look.
> 
> --chris
> 
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