Fishermans Bend

[Nik Dow]

We have until Fri 1 July to make a submission.  There seem to be only two alternatives, (a) do online Q'aire or (b) hard copy to the address below.  Q'aire not my preferred response as not focussed on our areas of interest, but here it is for anyone who wants to do it (please report back here with your critique of the Q'aire).  http://haveyoursay.delwp.vic.gov.au/fishermans-bend

Our submission could be quite simple.  I can deliver it personally in case it's too late to snail-mail it.

Fishermans Bend Working Group Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning Level 36, 2 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne 3000

Points:

1. direct (convenient) and safe (separated from motor traffic) route from the CBD to FB.  Government to provide maps showing this facility as part of all draft plans.

2. Local access to centres and schools via safe (protected) paths.

3. If any schools are provided in the area, children of school age should be able to ride to school safely, on appropriate infrastructure.

4. Local streets designed to prevent through traffic (rat-running).

Any comments?

[Kevin Balaam]

Hi Nik,

Any new bridge across the Yarra (eg freight railway) could include a cycling path?

As a side discussion, would any new freight railway bridge be from Newport/Spotswood?

Kevin

[Nik Dow]

I haven't heard of any plans for a lower yarra rail crossing, I don't think so.  I'm not sure where the freight line would cross the yarra ditto the proposed tram line but at least one of them should have a cyclepath (not a shared path) depending on the height of the bridge - entry to the City from docklands already involves a steep climb up either Collins or La Trobe St bridges (or the hostile and discouraged Flinders St route). The route along Lorimer St needs to be fixed up as well and connected properly to the CBD as that doesn't involve any hills.

[Helen Lew Ton]

To me the elephant in the room is a lack of commitment to active transport for moving out from any of the precincts to any north of the river destinations apart from the CBD.

Clearly this also means a lack of ready access from the north of the river. If you read closely you will see that only Lorimer is seen as being linked to ' Docklands, North Melbourne and West Melbourne'. How about links to the 'knowledge precinct' that includes RMIT, Melb Uni and all the research institutions that live on this side of the river? Especially to the Employment Precinct, though residents and workers in all FB precincts should have access to cycle routes as well.

Fishermans Bend as a whole is

- defined by the Yarra River

- carved up by City Link and the Westgate Freeway

Both of these are formidable barriers to transit into and out of the area and if active transport (walking and cycling) is to be encouraged, then more attention needs to be paid to provision of facilities

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[Nik Dow]

Restarting this discussion to bring it up to date.  FB is a brownfields site of some dimension so it has potential to be a large site done well, or badly, and hard to fix later.

Vic gov is already moving on FB trying to wind back the goldrush unleashed by Matthew Guy when he rezoned the whole area without planning or pre-purchase of land for public facilities. However it's hard to put the genie back in the bottle. The draft structure document at http://www.fishermansbend.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0023/87071/Draft-Fishermans-Bend-Framework-LR.pdf says nice things about active transport but nothing about how these will come about.

Here is a quick list for people to critique and add to:

1. " All streets will be fronted by well-designed buildings with shops and businesses at ground level and a high quality pedestrian environment." This would be a first, if achieved.
2. "New development in Montague will be centred on the transformation of Normanby Road into an active street that is attractively landscaped, pedestrian friendly and which provides a key cycling connection through the precinct." There are no plans in place for cycling improvements in Normany Rd and it's a very bike unfriendly place at the moment. Plans to provide a "key cycling connection" would be welcome but these don't exist.
3. "extend the Capital CityBike Trail into Fishermans Bend" The Capital City trail barely exists around the (existing) CBD and is shared with pedestrians everywhere. The cycling network (figure 7) doesn't show any such connection except via docklands, fine if you want to go from Brunswick to Fishermens bend but not a useful connection to the existing CBD, and with poor connections into FB.
4. "Create a network of new priority separated cycling routes that connect to existing and planned cycling networks, including the Westgate Punt and Yarra River Corridor" There are no "existing and planned cycling networks" to connect to. Except ones that are mentioned in other equally worthless strategy "documents" produced to gull the public.
5. Figure 6 "Proposed road hierachy" shows that all local roads can be used as rat runs under the proposed transport structure. This alone will ensure almost nobody uses a bicycle to get around and cars will dominate.
6. Figure 7 "cycling infrastructure"shows no direct route to the (existing) CBD. The proposed route with two bridges needing to be built has a serious gap to cross Lorimer St. If the numerous expensive bridges were ever built we would all get very fit climbing up and down over the river and over the Westgate freeway. Ground level connections are needed, not "proposed" bridges.
7. Proposed arterials and collectors are shown without protected bicycle infrastructure.

What do we want to see?

1. Filtered permiability to restrict through traffic to a small number of aterial roads, on which there would be physically separated bike lanes.
   
2. On other roads, no through traffic exists and speed limits are low.