ABC 774 - Bike path discussion + talkback

flyingdutch Wrote:
'peter from surrey hills' is 'known' also (presuming he wasnt in your
count) Greens candidate and BBUGerer

Not that troublemaker 'Fil' again, was it?


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cfsmtb

cfsmtb Wrote:
Not that troublemaker 'Fil' again, was it?

Peter Campbell. is pushing for an 'Eastern Railtrail': hence his
'angle'

refer:
http://www.lexicon.net/peterc/Easter...posal_0.3.html

a bit rough. makes sense in bigger picture. a few areas are gonna be
tricky tho


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flyingdutch

Link to audio from this morning 19/12 - file (6mb & 26 minutes) should
be there for a few weeks
http://users.tpg.com.au/adslmith/cm/...aths191205.mp3

I'll also host it on YarraBUG & post a link later.

Top work Robin, well done!


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cfsmtb

"cfsmtb" == cfsmtb writes:

cfsmtb Link to audio from this morning 19/12 - file (6mb & 26
cfsmtb minutes) should be there for a few weeks
cfsmtb http://users.tpg.com.au/adslmith/cm/...aths191205.mp3

Thanks for that.

In one respect I found the article uplifting, in another way I found it
rather depressing.

The uplifting aspect is that it was acknowledged that the bike path
network was engineered and designed as a recreational network rather
than a transport network.

The depressing aspect is that caller after caller identified a fear of
using the roads. ``I'd use my bike but I'm scared of the road.''

A couple of days ago I stumbled upon this article:

http://www.bikexprt.com/research/pasanen/index.htm

From the abstract:

``In the City of Helsinki, the number of injury-causing bicycle
accidents per km traveled is 5-times higher than for motorcar traffic
and 10-times higher than for bus traffic.

A recent study in Helsinki showed that it is safer to cycle on streets
amongst cars than on our two-way cycle paths along streets. It is hard
to imagine that our present two-way cycling network could be
rebuilt. But in those countries and cities which are just beginning to
build their cycling facilities, two-way cycle paths should be avoided in
urban street networks.

Even in more advanced cycling countries like Denmark and in the
Netherlands, with a lot of cyclists and with their one-way lanes and
paths, cycling is still much more dangerous than car driving or public
transport.''

Granted accidents per km travelled is a poor measure for comparison,
typically cars achieve a far greater mileage than cars. Also no
consideration is given to the comparable severity of injuries or the
decreased health costs which come about from better health from cycling.

What is clear though is that bicycle paths are more dangerous than using
the roads.

``Figure 2 shows that 45% of the cycling kilometres in Helsinki are on
cycle paths along streets, but 56% of injury accidents happen to these
cyclists.''

I've yet to see a study which proves that off road bike paths are safer
than cycling on the roads, so why are we persisting with off-road bike
paths for transport?
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Cheers | ~~ __@
Euan | ~~ _-\,
Melbourne, Australia | ~ (*)/ (*)