Brisbane City Council
From Bikeqld
Brisbane City Council administers the largest city in Queensland, and provides a range of facilities.
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Structure
As is typical of local government in Queensland, Brisbane City Council consists of a number of elected councillors (each representing a local ward) [1] and an elected Lord Mayor, currently Campbell Newman.[2]
The councillors also form eight standing committees,[3] of which the most directly relevant to cycling is the Public and Active Transport and Economic Development Committee, currently chaired by Cr Jane Prentice of Walter Taylor ward. The Establishment and Coordination Committee (commonly referred to as Civic Cabinet) is chaired by the Lord Mayor and consists of the chairpersons of the other committees.
The bureaucracy under the councillors themselves is headed by Council's CEO, currently Jude Munro,[4] and consists of a number of organisational units organised into five divisions and two commercially oriented business units.[5] The group most directly relevant to cycling is Traffic and Transport, part of the Infrastructure division.[6]
Policy
Council's cycling policy is primarily contained in its Brisbane Active Transport Strategy: Walking and Cycling Plan 2005-2010, which comes under the Transport Plan for Brisbane 2002-2016. Other cycling-related policies of Council are listed on this page.
Lord Mayor Campbell Newman was not a supporter of cycling during his first term, but during the campaign for his second term he made several more pro-cycling statements, including announcing a "Cycle City" policy that increased Council's cycle funding from roughly $7m per year to $25m per year for the four year term. [7] Although the statements use the general term "bikeway", details of the proposal indicate that intentions are almost exclusively for off-road paths and not on-road facilities, with on-road bike lanes being considered only where cyclists "do not compromise the flow of traffic", as though bicycles themselves are not traffic. [8]
Active Transport Unit
Traffic and Transport has an Active Travel Unit headed by Alton Twine and consisting of Travel Behaviour, Active School Travel and Bicycle Networks sections. The latter was until recently headed by Eleanor Somers (Senior Programme Officer) with Meg Northcott, Stephanie Edwards and Scott Evans (Programme Officers). [9]
Projects
Most of Council's cycling projects are planned under its published medium term policies (see Policy, above). In particular the Walking and Cycling Plan includes a list of planned projects, albeit without any detail. The focus is on extending the bikeway network, primarily with off-road paths and greenways. Other projects involve parking facilities (such as cyclepods and secure shelters), end of trip facilities (such as the King George Square cycle centre), and improving signage.
Indirectly working against these projects are projects being run by other sections of Council, such as the TransApex series of projects with budgets orders of magnitude above any of the cycling projects. For example the North-South Bypass Tunnel has caused multi-year closures of and massive disruptions to the primary commuter cycling routes from the north and south, and the Northern Link looks set to do the same for the primary route from the west. These projects are designed for the sole benefit of motor traffic to the exclusion of all else, and the damage they have caused to cycling in Brisbane has been immense.
Contact Council
Council is quite responsive to inquiries. It has a 24 hour call centre (07 3404 8888) with staff who are generally very polite and helpful. For a small set of maintenance-type requests (e.g. bike paths that need cleaning) it's possible to fill in an online "fix-o-gram", and for more general enquiries their web form "email" service.
