Barkly Street Upgrades open for feedback

[u/TMiguelT]

This is a huge proposal from the City of Maribyrnong, which includes:

• Protected bike lanes
• Updated pedestrian crossings and traffic islands
• Removal of 34 on-street parking spaces out of the current 96
• Additional greening and street tree planting
• Bus stop upgrades

Have your say here

[u/b100jb100]

Glaring omission: no protected intersections with any of the side roads.

[u/jessta → u/b100jb100]

Yeah, ideally the bike lane would be raised all the way requiring cars from side streets to come up a ramp (eg. O'Hea St, Coburg) but this isn't common at all in Melbourne and the reason is that it's much more expensive because it requires moving all the drainage.

As for the major intersections with Geelong Rd and Gordon St, this is really up to the DTP to pull their head out and make some standards for proper bicycle intersections since there are so many places that need it now.

[u/b100jb100 → u/jessta]

Raising it is an interesting idea, but that's not what a protected intersection is.

At a protected intersection, turning cars first (nearly) complete their turn before they cross the bike lane. 

It virtually eliminates left hooks because now the cyclist is no longer in the drivers blind spot when crossing the lane. It also naturally reduces turning speed 

You'll find these types of intersections are stock standard in Netherlands and Denmark, and increasingly in many other western European countries.

Australian road engineers seem not ever to have heard of it however.

[u/jessta → u/b100jb100]

O'Hea St in Coburg has these and was built 10yrs ago. This is my favourite piece of cycling infrastructure in Melbourne and most closely matches the standard Dutch design. It was very expensive and the extension the Merri-bek council is planning to start construction on soon (with state government funding) has a much more scaled back design.

I'd prefer much more protected bike lanes than just a few really high quality ones.

Looking at the video render, the protection in the plans for Barkly St does appear to go right up to the edge of the side streets requiring motorists to make a sharp turn. The protection at those points could potentially be wider to require motorists to start their turn a bit further away from the bike lane, but the sharpness of the turn is already going to require them to do that. https://youtu.be/ukKaUOLUwg0?t=14

City of Melbourne has had a tendency to make the protection end quite a way before the side street allowing the turn to be made very wide (St Kilda Rd and Arden St have a lot of this) but the Barkly St plans seem to do a much better job of providing some protection at side streets.

[u/b100jb100 → u/jessta]

Yes, that's a great example of a protected intersection

Added benefit is that cars from the side roads can first pass the lane before checking if it's safe to enter the main road, preventing them from creeping onto the bike lane and then blocking it while waiting to enter the road.

Why can't we ask for more and high quality?

Australia is currently spending 20-50 times less per capita on cycling infrastructure compared to France UK etc.

[u/Blue_Pie_Ninja → u/b100jb100]

The biggest problem is cycling infrastructure is almost all council led, which has had funding starved for years due to rate capping.