Tag Archive for 'cycling'

Merkel 1, Col du Tourmalet 0

Published
by
Robert Merkel
9 months ago
in Donation challenge
. 6 Comments

I’ve been ‘waiting for the photos to prove it, but Merkel and the Mountain ( described here) is over, and Merkel came out with a points decision, despite some setbacks along the way.

The really short version is that I completed 536 kilometres of the 570 promised, with the missing kilometres the result of a mechanical failure that I couldn’t repair on the road towards the end of my second day’s riding (in short, a wheel that was unsafe to ride on, and Qantas’s cruel excess baggage policy meant that the spare wheelset was at home rather than in the car where it should have been).

But in any case, I did climb the Col du Tourmalet on my third day, and did it in one hour, 34 minutes and 30 seconds. While it’s way off the pros, it’s 12 minutes better than this guy from the New York Times, who did it fresh.
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Victorian cycling strategy – a small step forward

Published
by
Robert Merkel
12 months ago
in Melbourne, Transport and Victoria
. 115 Comments

To not insubstantial fanfare (though not enough to distract from the continuing annoying sideshow that is Evan Thornley) the Victorian government has released its Cycling strategy, and it looks like it’s a step forward.

In essence, the plan acknowledges that over the past couple of years, cycling has re-emerged in Melbourne’s inner city as a significant mode of transport, and plans a network of bicycle lanes and paths within a ten-kilometer radius of the CBD to cater for and grow that demand. And it seems that the report writers have actually listened to the cycling bodies about what such a network needs. As the report puts it:

Central to a good bicycle network plan is the idea that its sum is greater than its parts. A path is more useful when connected to key destinations. Once one network is established it can be expanded, or strategic links can be added to connect it with others. A hierarchy of interlinked networks can be developed, linking a range of different types of destination, including public transport hubs and Central Activities Districts.

Routes within networks need to be visible, safe, and complemented by cycle parking facilities at destinations. On-road routes need to be continuous at intersections.

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Stereotypes aren’t always completely unfounded

Published
by
Robert Merkel
1 year, 1 month ago
in Media and Sydney
. 142 Comments

Debra Mayrhofer at New Matilda examines the media reporting of a recent death of a cyclist on Sydney’s M7 motorway, and is disturbed by the premise underlying much of it:

The segment briefly covered the crash and concluded by pointing out that the cyclists were travelling on the shoulder of the motorway (as they were legally entitled to do) but that “at this stage it’s not clear why they weren’t on the other side of the freeway where there’s a dedicated cycling track”. The reporter then announced that “other riders we spoke to said riding in the breakdown lane is a risk they wouldn’t take”…The problem with this blame-shifting approach – sometimes known as the “rape discourse” – in reporting road crashes, is that it implies that cyclists are asking for trouble by being on the road at all.

Eye-grabbing terminology aside, Mayrhofer’s analysis is worth looking in to a little.

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Two transport proposals

Published
by
Robert Merkel
1 year, 5 months ago
in Economics and Transport
. 74 Comments

With the Rudd government’s promise to speed up infrastructure funding, and the impending release of the Victorian Government’s transport statement, there’s been a couple of transport infrastructure plans floating around the media.

The first, splashed on the front pages of the Herald Sun, is a new freeway, is a leak from the Victorian Goverment’s transport plan. It joins the recently built Eastlink tollway in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, to the Mornington Peninsula freeway in Melbourne’s far south-eastern fringes, bypassing the suburbs of Carrum Downs, Frankston and Mount Eliza. The government wants federal money, from infrastructure Australia, for the project to build it without charging tolls. The second, put together by the Cycling Promotion Fund, a consortium of bicycle-related businesses big and small, proposes to spend a similar amount of money over four years building cycling infrastructure across Australia’s big cities, with the goal of “a doubling of cycling trips in capital cities by 2012 and tripling cycling trips by 2029 based on the 2006 census data.”

While it’s perhaps unfair to compare a public submission by what I imagine is a relatively small lobbying organization to a state government-backed inquiry can do, it strikes me that there’s a fundamental weakness in this document, and most proposals for large investments in cycling infrastructure over the years. The result is usually a pat on the head and a dribbling of money for cyclists, with the rivers of money continuing to go to the road builders.

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