Green bridge detour

[John Nightingale]

BCC Local Assets has been working on the cycleway link underneath the
Annerley end of the bridge. Cyclists have been expected to cross the busway
at the traffic lights. However, there has been no signage whatever, and the
job has relied on traffic controllers to guide riders.

My own experience has been riding from UQ across the bridge and finding the
usual link closed, no signage, no controller, fat or otherwise, and only
intuition to guide our little group, so we rode up to Annerley Rd and north
to Doyle Meml Drv.

In the other direction, from the Corso, no signage pointing across the
busway at the lights, so reliance on the usually absent controller.

Advice from Local Assets chappie was that the controllers go on duty at 7am,
but no evidence of them at 7.30 - 9 on a number of mornings.

Suggest that BCC Active Transport Unit needs to take a more proactive role.
The complete absence of detour signs seems remarkable, given that such signs
were in abundance when the busway tunnel was being completed. Ditto for
other major works. It seems that minor works don't justify signage, even if
the detour is exactly as significant.

The work should be finished 'this week'.

J.

[Ian Lister]

Hi John,

I agree with what you're saying about lack of signage (based on what you
describe - I haven't seen it myself), and it sounds like you have made
your suggestion to Local Assets and Active Transport directly (which is
always important because I don't think there's anybody from there on any
of these lists).

What I'm interested in is how we can best communicate news of upcoming
closures to cyclists, and I wonder if you have any thoughts? Obviously
signage at the actual location is the best single thing that can be done,
but I'd like to think that it should be possible to find additional ways
to get the word out to people who might be interested.

FWIW BCC did notify BQ and CBD BUG some time in advance of the closure,
and it's on the relevant sections of all three organisations' web sites:

http://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/BCC:BASE::pc=PC_5975
http://www.cbdbug.org.au/recentdetours
http://www.bq.org.au/bq-info/closures.shtml

However, I realise that posting something on a web site is not a
particularly useful means of disseminating this sort of information (how
many people want to check a web page every morning before they ride to
work?), and I'm interested in trying to work out what _is_ a good
mechanism (or combination of mechanisms).

CBD BUG tries to include mention of upcoming works in our monthly emails
to members, but often that's too late to be useful. We know a lot of
people don't like being emailed too frequently so we try to avoid emailing
about individual issues unless they are particularly significant. In this
particular case we received advice of this closure the day before an email
to all members, so it was just an oversight that it didn't make it in, but
if it was a day later it wouldn't have made it.

Upcoming and current issues are also announced at meetings, but they are
similarly not all that frequent (relative to the amount of notice of works
that we usually get), and only a minority of members attend.

We also publish all the upcoming works we know of (including this one) on
Twitter:

http://twitter.com/cbdbug/status/11021495604
http://twitter.com/cbdbug

We have over 650 followers on Twitter, but in reality probably a very
small proportion of the affected people use Twitter at all, let alone saw
that particular tweet.

So, are there any other ways you (or others here) can think of to help get
the word out? Or is it just the case (and it may well be) that decent
signage on the ground is the only method that's really effective? This is
just a throw-it-out-there request for ideas; it's something I've been
idly pondering for a while, and I figure this is a good opportunity to ask
around.

Thanks,

Ian

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[James Philp]

All
What about a self subscribe / unsubscribe email alert system if someone has the expertise and time to manage?
Jim