Adrian Tritschler wrote:
>
> Patrick Turner <info@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> writes:
>
> > cfsmtb wrote:
> >> jcjordan Wrote:
> >> > The simple fact is that the NRMA, Evans in particular, hate all
> >> > non car users and this hatred is particularly aimed at cyclist.
> ..snip..
> >> A online petition has been created for NRMA members.
> >> http://www.gopetition.com/online/19181.html
> ..snip..
> >> -- cfsmtb
>
> > I'm a car owner, '86 Ford Laser, and a keen cyclist.
>
> ..snip..
>
> > Lots of wrong on BOTH sides, from what I witness every day.
>
> Sure is, the great Aussie road users have pretty much the same attitude
> to each other whether they are on bikes or in cars.
>
> > I hate driving a car on Sydney's roads, and cycling is an unpleasant
> ..snip..
>
> > I discovered Canberra, where someone actually bothered to plan a place
> > that grated less on an ordinary human. Then I discovered its cycle
> > paths, also a result of planning them in as a matter of course during
> > suburban developments.
>
> I really have to take exception with that; I grew up in Canberra, spent
> some 20 years riding bikes to primary school, high school, university
> and various places of work and found that its layout is designed for
> speedy *car* trans****t, lots of roads with high average speeds -- hardly
> what you want for riding.
I ride 200km a week on a mixture of different roads and cycle paths.
Its utterly dreamy compared to Sydney, where I grew up.
I often ride on outer or inner suburban roads in the middle of the day
and traffic is very quiet
and where I have to share a lane with motorists.
I simply avoid the busy roads where there is no cycle lane,
or where its unpleasant even where there is a cycle lane, like most of
Tuggeranong Parkway and Drakeford Drive.
I rarely go cycling in Queenbeyan.
> After-the-fact "cycle paths" were then put
> in, twisting and winding this way and that through the parkland and
> verges, crossing and recrossing the roads where at every intersection
> you can be damn sure that the people on the cycle path give way to "real
> traffic."
True, many cycle paths didn't arrive until the population reached about
70,000.
Before that, people still rode bicycles, but traffic wasn't too bad.
I don't find the stopping and starting because of cycle path crossings
at roadways to be a problem.
In many cases the cycle path goes **UNDER** a busy road.
If I ride to Tuggeranong Town Centre from Watson, its roughly 29km on
the roads, and on a sunday morning
early it takes a slow old bastard like me just under an hour.
if I take the meandering cycle path via the lake, Woden, near Athlon
Drive,
maybe I add 8 minutes, and there are plenty of nice long stretches
between stops
where I can ride as fast as i want to pedal.
If you do try to stay on cycle paths in Canberra the slowing factor due
to bends, obstacles such as walkers, dogs, women with prams, dad & mum
out with toddlers,
and road crossings including "real traffic", et all, you will still get
VERY fit and VERY healthy
simply by being out there and getting from A to B, and delays are
minimal.
Just what on earth is a PRACTICAL alternative??
> Yes, its better/easier to ride around Canberra than Sydney, but Canberra
> was designed spread out with lots of roads because "in the future,
> everyone will have a car!" -- it certainly wasn't designed for cycling.
You are technically correct. Walter Burley Griffin didn't formulate his
plans
for Canberra based on everyone riding bikes.
He designed a nice relaxed city spread out far and wide, and it left a
lot of room
for adding in things as we went along with implementing the town
planning.
Nobody really knew just how the car would be wor****pped as the new God
of Mobility.
New suburbs now have their cycle paths added as a matter of course.
>
> Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, regardless of the infrastructure, the
> people you have to deal with are the problem, and *that* is the problem
> that the governments and the cycling bodies refuse to deal with. More
> painted lines and more bike paths doesn't mean less f'wits trying to run
> me down everytime a bike lane ends, every time a bike path wasn't built
> to duplicate the road I want to ride along.
I can assure you that the basic problem you cite, ie, having to
get along with the flowing crowd is one nobody has ever solved very well
ever since the very first villages, towns and cities came into being
thousands of years ago.
People got trampled by horses in the horse power days, and I am sure
there was a risk to travel the roads due to the ****tard-****wit factor
wherever strangers
had to deal with each other.
A girl can safely drive to work, and maybe ride without being hassled,
but at any time before 1800, any girl would be stupid to
walk 10 miles alone on a public road.
A strong fit man would think twice about it.
Horses were the bicycles of the time, and its a long way to the ground
if you fell off one. No Medicare then either.
People lived in a way which avoided travel for most of their lives
prior to the industrial revolution.
The average lifespan was a surly low number of hard years....
I rode up and down Northbourne Ave before the cycle lanes went in.
It was a suicide derby on many days.
But now its **much** safer riding Northbourne with cycle lanes.
Some motorists remain pissed off mightily because the lane width
was reduced from luxurious widths down to what is still wider than on
many Sydney roads.
Canberra Drivers are amoung the very worst, and are spoiled rotten.
Nobody ever gets exactly what they want, and the Governments cannot
collect enough taxation to make it a perfect world for all.
Its that simple.
> > Even Canberra is slowly and surely being Chatswood-ised, or
> > Paramatta-ised, and that's all **** where its happening; progress and
> > growth, like cancer to me.
> >
> > But fortunately the town dysplanning muckeration is not universal, and
> > I can be in paddocks where cows and sheep graze peacefully within 5
> > minutes of leaving home on a bicycle from my house in Watson which is
> > 6km out of Canberra CDB, 'Civic', as its known.
> >
> > Patrick Turner.
I did spend 1981 in Sydney due to work, and as a young man I had lots of
fun
with night life and socials. I didn't ride a bicycle then.
I returned back home to Canberra in '82 where I own a house, and I was
very glad to be back again.
I bought a tourer bike from Spokesman Cycles, and had a lot of fun on
that.
In 1986, I began bike racing and trained 300km a week, mainly on roads,
but they were safer than Sydney's.
In 1988, again I spent a year in Sydney, and I found it had become much
busier,
and because I was based at Turramurra, I could ride the northside OK and
national Parks.
I used to often ride to Palm Beach for a swim.
I'd also ride up to Newcastle sometimes, but I did Gosford twice a week
in the
race season with a mate. The bit between Hornsby and Berowra before the
freeway
was finished was a real nightmare.
Occasionally I'd ride down the Pacific Hwy into Sydney CBD.
I must have been mad.
Semi trailer drivers were good though, zipping past with a foot
clearance at 80kph+
How I wasn't killed I really dunno.
After the job was over I again returned to the ACT with a massive sigh
of relief!!!
Now that I don't race, and because I feel hemmed in by bunch riding, I
prefer
riding alone, and to take in the view, the wildlife, and the smiles
on faces coming the other way.
In future, as oil and coal all their multiple by-products become
ruinously expensive
because there isn't enough supply, perhaps planning trends will
change to us humans all having to huddle together more tightly to reduce
travelling.
Somehow I think the car is hear to stay, but its design will change to
being lighter and much less thirsty.
The Chinese and Indians will lead the way with motor vehicle design.
GM in the US has no dsire to make cars light and cheap, and use vitually
no fuel.
( Remember the demise of the electric car GM leased out in 1996? )
Road design will change if there is more mainstream demand to suit
cyclists AND motorists.
In other words, if 25% of ppl driving to work suddenly
left the car at home and rode to work, there would be some radical
changes
needed to avoid the mahem that would initially result.
But when I look down Northbourne at 11am and see so many cars ahead of
me
and I'm the only cyclist, I cannot blame motorists for thinking
I am a spoiled brat on whom too much money has been spent.
I think humans will have to make some really huge changes to
many basic ideas about living if we want to stop
our activities leading to our extinction. Going **backwards**
to how China was say 25 years ago when the bicycle was the main means of
trans****t
is simply never going to ever happen in any western democracy
where folks can vote to maintain a status quo which long term is utterly
unsustainable.
Politician's speaches and their doings in governments are all about the
next 10 years max.
Most people vote for who's going to make them financially better off
next week.
With such wonderful clerverness, our species should be able to make a
real horrible mess after
another 200 years. Getting from now to then is now called progress.
I see the procession as an unfortunate planetary event.
But you never know, maybe technology will allow us to cling to the bosom
of the affluenza disease for just a little longer...
If everyone in the world drives a car, and needs 48kwH of generated
electrical power
PER DAY, like in most western democracies, then we'd need 6 more Planet
Earths.
Good town planning and a few people riding bicycles isn't going to
change a great deal.
Ever think what its like to live in say Burma, where one's carbon
footprint
is about as big as it ever ought to be? Its insecure, that's for sure,
especially after last week's stormy weather.
And not one Ozzy wants to live the way they live in Burma.
Looking at the traffic, you'd never think Oz ppl bought a million
bicycles last year....
I think they buy them to feel better. Like exercise machinery, they use
a the bike
once, and then it just gathers dust.....
They find our how awfully slow and boring it is to ride anywhere.
They become frightened by the motorists.
Arriving at work all sweaty means you need a shower. And you are dog
tired.
People won't use bicycles in a big way until things got very very crook
such as petrol going to $20 per litre.
Then you'd see rickshaws and all the other 3rd world trans****t methods
on the roads.
Cities depend on road trans****t to bring vast amounts of foood etc.
Petrol and deisel at $20 a litre would cause economic mahem.
To a villager in Burma earning $2 a day, a litre of petrol probably
seems to him like it would to us
if we had to pay $50 a litre. Even the simplest bicycle is expensive.
There are not many carbon fibre framed bicycles with all the gee whiz
gear on them in Burma.
Meanwhile in India, they cheer with delight over their mobile phones.
It means they can avoid a long ride to find out something.
Stop complaining, youse never addit so good :-) !!
Patrick Turner.
> Adrian
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