How will Melbourne Metro's closure of Grattan St affect cyclist safety?

[Helen Lew Ton]

Some thoughts on 2 intersections

1. Elizabeth and Pelham St

Rerouting of busses will see 20+ busses per hour turning left across southbound cyclists in Elizabeth St. Principal offender is the 401 shuttle from North Melbourne station which runs on a 2-3 minute frequency in morning peak

https://www.ptv.vic.gov.au/getting-around/network-changes/parkville/

2. Queensberry and Elizabeth St

As vehicles that want to head east from Royal Pde will no longer be able to use Grattan, there is bound to be a sizeable increase in cars etc turning left at this intersection and crossing the marked bike which directs southbound cyclists out of the  Copenhagen lane and across the intersection. Plenty of potential for increased conflict and accidents!

I was at this intersection yesterday and there was a semi trailer parked in the spots closest to the corner and 

- completely obscuring the sign that warns motorists to look out for bikes

- leaving zero sight line to the conflict zone where southbound bikes cross the left turn filter lane into Queensberry.

Is it worth my while to do a traffic count to quantify conditions before and after closure of Grattan St.? If yes, a count at Queensberry to determine 'before' needs to be done tomorrow morning as I'm pretty sure that closure  of Grattan is from Monday next week.

Looking at Pelham St can wait

Helen 

[Jonathan Nolan]

Seems kind of sucky doesn't it! The metro development plans are very anti bike at the moment - hopefully we'll have some improvement with the final designs. 

I'm working so can't do counts tomorrow. The problem I see is that we are fighting both metro and PTV here - and so even if these temporary stops do reduce safety it's unlikely we'll get them to change. 

--
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Melbourne BUG" group.
To post to this group, send email to melbou...@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
melbourne-bug+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/melbourne-bug?hl=en
 
Visit the Melbourne BUG website at http://www.melbournebug.org/

---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Melbourne BUG" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to melbourne-bug+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

Jonathan Nolan
jonathan...@gmail.com

[Helen Lew Ton]

Have a couple of counters so will head to Queensberry/ Elizabeth tomorrow for morning peak. 

Will count

- southbound bikes

- left turning vehicles

and see what it shows. This will be baseline data.

Helen  

[Helen Lew Ton]

Interesting 2 hours spent counting this morning.

Summary

409 cars entered left turn filter lane

365 bikes entered intersection, a number turned left, not counted accurately but estimate 20%

25 buses, all route 401. Not sure what's going on here as Grattan St closure has not yet happened, and this is fewer than 50% of scheduled services.

What was really interesting is how considerate of each other both motorists and cyclists were. Lots of cars stopping and looking for bikes, lots of acknowledgment from riders. Will be interesting to see if this continues when traffic increases and drivers who are not yet familiar with the intersection are added to the mix. That said, they are likely to be used to dealing with bikes when turning left into Grattan St, so there are grounds for optimism here.

Another thing that I noticed is how difficult the move left is for drivers because of the geometry of the merging lanes. Drivers have to look hard over their left shoulders. Left mirror is not useful and columns in vehicle may also obscure vision. 

In general the parking area immediately adjacent to the merge was not heavily used but for a short period a large delivery van was there and this blocked the view of oncoming bikes  (and cars!). Removal of 2-3 car parking spaces closest to the intersection would improve sight lines for all users. As I  mentioned yesterday, I have seen a semi trailer parked here and this reduced vision to zero.

That's all for now

Helen 

[tom keeble]

I had to use the south side of Grattan St around lunchtime today. They have already closed Grattan (westbound at least) to all intents and purposes and all active travellers are pushed on to the footpath.

Unless you absolutely need to visit a building in the area, avoid it completely if on a bike and travel westbound inside the grounds of the university (there's lots of little alleyways and passages for those not familiar, and you can still cut through south lawn car park despite it being officially closed) or go down to Queensberry and use that. 

in positive news, PAs looks like it's about to open again. Let's hope the new leasee, David Haddad of Dr Dax fame, doesn't make it a completely souless experience.

[Nik Dow]

The existing left turn arrangements are terrible, the usual CoM green paint taking bikes across the path of left-turning cars, trucks & buses. If you try to ride in front of left-turning vehicles at Queensberry or Victoria St they will drive straight over you and yell at you for getting in their way.  Cyclists know this and don't expect cars to give way so it's effectively a non-bike lane.