In my recent entry on trundling the Anniversary Trail, I made this small digression:
This makes me wonder at the necessity for the ridiculously tight barriers at every bloody road crossing on the Anniversary Trail—I've always thought that they represented a line of thinking that assumed cyclists are children. But when the children are as alert and sensible as these kids were, it does seem a bit pointless. Actually I've noticed a few of these barriers have been partially dismantled in recent times, which is a hopeful sign (if indeed this has been 'official' work!) But thatÃs a rant for another day, perhaps.
Well, following a few comments to that post, it appears that the day for this rant has arrived.
VicRoads has some information sheets on Design standards for bicycle facilities and among them is Cycle Notes 16 of August 2005: Safe Road Crossings for Off-Road Paths. For minor roads (of less than 3000 vehicles per day, which would be most of the at grade level road crossings on the Anniversary Trail) it recommends the "General Crossing Treatment", consisting of "Road Ahead" signs, holding rails at the edge and parallel to the path, and no standing zones on the road.
None of the recommendations suggest placing obstructions or barriers of any kind across the off-road path. (The illustration of a signalised crossing in Figure 11 on page 5 shows the barrier on the Anniversary Trail at Burke Rd, although the horizontal rail that was in front of the picket fence—not shown in the photo—has recently been removed at this crossing.)
I think this makes sense because when you approach an intersection, your attention should be on traffic in the road ahead not on negotiating an obstacle course. I have nothing to back this but I suspect that Boroondara Council is gradually removing or altering such barriers at road crossings, probably for the very reason that they are an illusion: they don't really improve safety.
And for the record, my complaint about barriers at "every bloody road crossing on the Anniversary Trail" was a tad exaggerated, as can be seen on the very first page of the info sheet: the example photo of an "at grade crossing" in Figure 1 is indeed the Anniversary Trail and there are no barriers to be seen.
And I should note that since that photo was taken, this crossing has been upgraded to include holding rails and "Road Ahead" signs.
Now if we could just get that sort of treatment at all crossings along the Gardiners Creek Trail, I'd be a happy little commuter.
Yeah that's a good point from David. Plenty of people just make the dash straight across the four lanes and the tram lines at this crossing, but I prefer not to do that. You also see people making the same dash of death at High St, even though the detour to the crossing lights is minor at that crossing.
I take a detour to cross Toorak Rd by (when heading north) swapping over to ride on Welfare Parade at the bridge near Dion St, then down to Toorak Rd on Lithgow St; left into Toorak Rd; right into Wattle Valley Rd, then back to the trail via Fordham Avenue. This has the advantage of avoiding that nasty little steep pinch to bring you back up to railway grade on the north side of Toorak Rd.
Heading south is a bit trickier because of the right turn into Lithgow St from Toorak Rd—you've got to be pretty brave to sit on the tram tracks with your right arm out! A hook turn at Highfield Rd isn't too stressful though.
As you're allowed to ride on the footpath when you're accompanying young kids, it would be OK ride down the footpath on the north side of Toorak Rd between Lithgow St and Wattle Valley Rd, and use the pedestrian crossing at the lights.
But that doesn't alter the fact that this is a troublesome road crossing on a trail that is otherwise highly suitable for families riding together. A bridge here would be a great addition to the trail, but although Bicycle Victoria has mentioned the possibility, I can't see it happening any time soon.
See items 23 and 24 on page 49 of the Boroondara draft strategy PDF. It's open for public comment so just send them an email. On the minor roads wombats are good: Refer BV.
Back on the chicanes: Alot of these "devices" are intended to stop the passage of cars and motorcycles and strangely the majority can be circumvented by just driving around them. They are also an obstacle to learner riders who will had a run in with one of them, at some stage. As Treadly says - concentrating on crossing an obstacle course immediately before you cross a road is counterproductive to crossing the road safely.
When I lived in the area I used to jump off the track at Straughn Street (the last street before Toorak Rd on the left) and go down Summerhill to cross there. Less useful with kids maybe, but randomly crossing the road there is insane - and I wasn't too happy about the last bit of path anyhow.
The High St road pedestrian crossing is just infuriating. Sure, its only 4 metres away, but its 4 metres with a lot of pedestrians, and right in front of the ATM at the Westpac, with its attendant queue waiting to use it. It should have been located in line with the bike path :(
For want of sanity, I tried taking a route that would be a commute to work from Kew to Dandenong, taking the Anniversary/Outer Circle to Gardiner's Creek to Scotchman's Creek to Dandenong Creek trails. The goal was to estimate whether it was practical to use a velomobile or even a racing bike to make the commute.
Dandenong Creek trail was the most practical, with good width and large radius corners (when there weren't deviations due to works in progress). The other trails were a bit of a joke with the narrow widths, frequent stops and meandering paths. Thanks for highlighting this.
Rising fuel prices will mean increasing uptake of human powered transport, and the current infrastructure is getting better, but still seems to be designed for anyone but commuters. I guess it's not surprising seeing as bicycle paths see about 1% or so of the money that roads get.
The government needs to be building the future commuting infrastructure now while we still have cheap energy. Human power is orders of magnitude less than that of the internal combustion engine but is still capable of average speeds that are better than a congested city.
The key is to prevent loss of kinetic energy and gravitational potential energy at all costs. The way this is achieved is with a bicycle freeway. (i.e. combination of straighten roads/ follow contours, eliminate all stops but local stops).
The beauty about it is that roads can be much smaller for the same volume of people using the road, and because the maximum expected weight of cyclists/hpvs on the road are about 100 times less, you can get by with much cheaper bridges. Maintenance costs will also be much lower.
Indeed, I have previously suggested that using the Anniversary Trail as a commute route would be a real mix of the sublime and the tedious. If it were on my route, I'd use the trail selectively.
Zed has clearly made a good study of the Draft Boroondara Bicycle Strategy, which proposes the following for the Toorak Rd crossing:
Option 1 - Short Term Provide a pedestrian cross walk on east side of the intersection with Summerhill Road
Option 2 - Medium Term Provide an additional signalised pedestrian crossing adjacent to the trail
Option 3 - Long Term Construct a bridge over Toorak Road
This seems to suggest that the prediction of not any time soon for a bridge is accurate. However, there is a window of opportunity here, as the draft plan is open for comment until 22 February.
More favourably for the High St (Ashburton) crossing, the draft plan recommends:
Option A - The preferred option would be to move the pedestrian crossing adjacent to the Anniversary Trail (move will be approx. 30m to the east of existing location), and this would continue to serve pedestrians/shoppers. This would also place the crossing nearer to Ashburton Station.
Option B is a bit limp though, and would hardly be an improvement. Some community comment may well be relevant here as well.
Oh yeah, and VicRoads appears to like "wombats" too, although it calls them "priority crossing treatment". How dull.
These road crossings are notorious for two things: 1 - offering extremely poor vision when trying to observe the traffic on the road; and 2 - being far more dangerous than just riding on the road to begin with. This is why most experienced cyclists who have tried a variety of routes won't come within a bull's roar of those things. I'd suggest those barriers are there only as a liability issue -- largely because councils realise the dangers bike paths pose, and don't want to be sued when somebody is killed.
Comments
I agree with you about the barriers but I think a bigger problem is the poor crossing at Toorak Road. A 200 metre detour and wait at two pedestrian crossings is required to cross if you don't want to cross 4 lanes of heavy traffic. Not good for kids. The Melways indicates a bridge crossing here at the same grade as the railway which would be fantastic.