not in CoM -> Moray St lanes

[Nik Dow]

melbourne Metro are working with CoPP on improving Moray St for bikes as an alternative route to St Kilda Rd where the (already inadequate) bike lanes will be affected by the domain station works.  Metro has told us that bike access through the works will be maintained but it sounds like there could be delays and detours.

Tonight you can visit the drop-in information session from 6pm to 8pm at Sth Melbourne town Hall.  I was there on Friday and looked at the plans.  There are no detailed drawings yet but the preferred option is protected lanes with some loss of parking because angle parking would change to parallel.  However the protected lanes might be only 1.2m which is not enough to overtake.  Jonathan & I have been working on better options to make the bike lane wide enough for overtaking and we will post a draft BUG submission here shortly for people to help us improve.

Roundabout treatments to go with the protected lanes are as per Ausroad guidance (i.e. shitty australian ideas) with he bike lane merging into the car lane, effectively giving cars right of way, which is probably safest given that any attempt to give right of way to bikes will just lure cyclists into danger as cars ignore the law.

I think the existing roundabout intersections are large enough to support protected intersections and if this is the case we should propose it.  This would mean removing the roundabouts which are excessive traffic controls for quiet local streets and are anti-VRU.  The intersection would narrow down to 2 car lanes in each direction with tighter corner radius to slow turning cars. Space for one vehicle is then provided on the exit/approach on each of the 4 legs of the cross road for a motor vehicle to wait while peds and bikes cross with the pedestrian crossing and bike crossing next to each other and ideally raised to footpath height with a raised platform so that cars see "piano keys" on the approach. Cars entering or leaving the intersection have space to dwell without blocking other cars and this reduces driver anxiety when turning or entering the intersection so they have time to wait for peds and bikes. By making the crossings Zebra crossings and putting a give-way sign on the bike crossing, we can give right of way to peds and bikes in a safe way with car traffic suitably slowed. 

CoPP might  entertain this idea as they are trying to be more bike friendly and the metro project gives access to a big bucket of funds.

Thoughts?

[Thijs]

Nice work Nik, and agree with your comments. 

I haven't seen the intersection designs yet as they were not part of the public flyer that I've come across. I know one of the project engineers at Melbourne Metro quite well and I provided her with the following feedback based on the limited info I got from the public flyer.

• What I think the design should aim for:
• Forgiving, meaning a small mistake should not have big consequences
• Catering to “non-standard” bikes like cargobikes
• Future proof, being able to absorb much higher bike volumes than currently present
• A separated lane should be the preferred solution, but I doubt the current design satisfies the aims:
• The separated bike lanes could work, but with a width of just 1.25m it will only be comfortable if the kerbs are forgiving like in the attached. This design which is now standard in the Netherlands allows you to ride onto the footpath if you lose your balance temporarily and have to swerve, or to make room when someone wants to overtake. With the current standard high kerbs used in Australia and a width of just 1.25m, there is a much higher risk to crash into the kerb and no way to correct that. It also means that passing is impossible: even on the St Kilda Road lane between Princes Bridge and Southbank Blvd (which I think is 2m wide), passing is often a bit hairy because the high kerbs reduce the usuable space by so much.
• The width of 1.25m means that riding in a cargobike will be very uncomfortable. Our tricycle is 92cm wide and some other tricycles are even wider like these ones http://www.greencabs.net.au/  and http://dutchcargobike.com.au/shop/bakfiets-riksja-elderly-people/ . Having just 15 cm on either side before running into a high kerb results in a very stressful ride to stay balanced.
• It’s a bit unclear to me why one would need a 3m traffic lane + 0.5m separation between parked cars. It will make it harder to reduce car speeds and that space would be much better used for the bike lane. Increasing the width of the lane to 1.75m makes a massive difference.
• If the kerbs on the separated lane will be high, I definitely prefer the on-road lanes with chevrons, yielding much better comfort for bike riders. The effective width of 2.4m provides a much less stressful environment than 1.25 + high barriers, and allows for safe passing too. It also caters easily to higher volumes and to non-standard bikes. It would require a speed limit of at most 40kph though.
• Some other questions:
• Will there be a protected intersection design? This is crucial and I would hope Moray St provides a great setting to implement that to create a truly safe and continuous bicycle environment that encourages a wider demographic to participate. Often a single ‘unsafe’ intersection stops people from riding altogether. Intersections have been the weak spot in all current designs in Australia, although the knowledge is already here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8bugarqjiirf1er/2014%20-%20SeparatedCyclewaysGuidelinesQLD.pdf?dl=0 (page 32 and on; 45-46).
• What happens to the City Road intersection and continuation onto Queensbridge St? The first bit of Queensbridge is probably OK, but after that the bike lane gets squeezed and disappears completely. Also on the north side of Queens Bridge turning left, where the bike lane is just gone until one gets to William St. I understand this is not part of this particular project, but it is an essential bit again to link to the William St lanes as a North-South connection.

[Jonathan Nolan]

Thijs, 

Here is the draft for Melbourne and Port Phillip BUG's submission.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByO18-w-cDzDcldQOFdDWTM1NU0

I think it includes most of your concerns and ideas. It's tight, but after discussing it with Nick I'm of the opinion that 1.75m(+.3 separator) is wide enough and we should push for protected lanes. 

You suggested we go even wider (1.75+.6) - We will push that in the meeting 

About the curbs being mountable on the footpath side: I'm apprehensive. Having mountable curbs on the traffic side enables fast cyclists to overtake in the parking lane, but do we really want them undertaking? The advantage is that there is TONNES of footpath room around the trees on Moray Street, but there are a lot of obstacles like power poles that make this hard. 

Re: kavanagh, option "B" in the Kavanagh section of the document above is what they're considering. 

Queensbridge is CoM - metro aren't touching it. But the protection will go all the way to city road. 

[Thijs]

Thanks Jonathan, looks very good! I see your point about the mountable kerbs, but I think the added comfort and confidence for slower/less confident riders outweighs the potential and occasional undertaking by a fast rider. The fact that there's idiots out there should not guide general design principles. 

In addition, these mountable kerbs are also about the comfort of being able to get out of the way of the traffic when you plan to stop on the footpath and directly ride on to that. It's a really important safety and comfort feature of contemporary Dutch bike lane design that I think should be pushed in Australia too.

[Nik Dow]

I think having rollover kerbs is important as it's one of the objections that people make to protected lanes is the inability to get out of them.  Undertaking won't be a problem if we succeed in getting the lanes wide enough to overtake in the buffer/chevron zone.

One issue with altering the kerbs is the bluestone is heritage listed. That means an extra application process for the project and extra chances for anti-bike people to object. My view is that rider safety should trump heritage and there are plenty of other streets with similar bluestone that can stand as examples of "heritage". But it does make it harder to win. 

[Jonathan Nolan]

Mountable curbs are in our submission currently for the parked car side of the protected bike lane. The question is whether we should support it for the footpath side as well. There has been some concerns raised that mountable curbs will result in cars parking half way up the curb, narrowing the bike lane further. Maybe this will happen, but we will see...

Re: bluestone. A quick look on google maps and I can't find any. Where is it? 

The other thing about applying the Scandinavian approach here is the street trees. How much benefit are cyclists going to get in being able to undertake when there is a tree every 10 metres? 

[Nik Dow]

sorry I missed the bit about kerbs between the parked cars and bikelane.  I had imagined the bike lane stays at grade so no need to resurface, with buffer zone in chevron paint and something like plastic pickets mounted in the paint line on the edge of the car parking bays.  Not that I'm against kerbs on the parking side of the lane, if it will help keep the cars out.  The point of the rollover kerb on the footpath side (as explained by Thijs) is to help ppl ride closer to that edge (making the effective width of the path greater) and to facilitate leaving the path if you have to stop for any reason (phone call). If some hero wants to overtake on the left then that is their problem, hopefully they don't impact sensible people.

Re bluestone, I'm going on what the professionals at the drop-in meeting told me.  I asked them about bluestone and was it heritage listed, they said "yes".  Maybe it's only in some places.  We should push for an application to remove the bluestone if necessary. 

[Jonathan Nolan]

I suggested raised bollards to Metro and they said they were looking for something a bit more 'permanent'. given this is a high income residential street I foresee lots of complaints about 'ugly' bollards. Metro are willing to spend the cash for concrete so why not let them?

A mountable curb could push cyclists to the left, that makes sense. I guess it depends a bit on how well they install the curb - if it is uneven (as is often the case with these retrofittings) it might not work. 

Take this example:

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/e9/31/f0/e931f0c7335d88c302a92fc2bc60b79b.jpg

Cyclists are not going to have their wheel on that gap. It might in fact cyclists to go wider away from it. 

On Wellingtoon street they resheeted the whole bike lane when they installed the separators in order to make it smooth, so I guess that's an option. 

I'm going to flesh out the section on mountable curbs and add in everybody's suggestions. The phone call situation is a great one I hadn't considered, reason alone to give mountable a run in our submission. 

A mountable curb might be a good opportunity to take 200mm back from the footpath too.... There's a limit to what we can take because the mature trees will cause issues. 

The biggest problem with the parking side of the bike lane is that the more mountable the treatment is the easier it is for bikes to cross it to get out of the lane, but also for cars to get across too and park incorrectly. Maybe this won't be a big issue because it's residential and therefore you'll have the same people parking there over and over again? I can see with a mountable option that every single car might park 20-30mm over the separator though and into the chevron. Very difficult! 

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[Nik Dow]

Maybe car incursion can be managed, council will book, residents as you say be on it. Drivers might be nervous their cars will be damaged (accidentally).

[Jonathan Nolan]

That's true, although their fear of having their car damaged by passing vehicles on the right is probably higher than cyclists on the left. 

I think we should risk it and see how it goes. 

On Fri, 1 Sep 2017 at 13:18, Nik Dow <nik...@gmail.com> wrote:

Maybe car incursion can be managed, council will book, residents as you say be on it. Drivers might be nervous their cars will be damaged (accidentally).

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[Jonathan Nolan]

I had a look today re the bluestone. There is lots of non heritage bluestone on the footpath extensions. Ther eis also bluestone on the curb, but not in the gutter. I'll show you below: 

On Friday, September 1, 2017 at 1:30:38 PM UTC+10, Jonathan Nolan wrote:

That's true, although their fear of having their car damaged by passing vehicles on the right is probably higher than cyclists on the left. 

I think we should risk it and see how it goes. 

On Fri, 1 Sep 2017 at 13:18, Nik Dow <nik...@gmail.com> wrote:

Maybe car incursion can be managed, council will book, residents as you say be on it. Drivers might be nervous their cars will be damaged (accidentally).

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[Thijs]

I'm not sure I follow the mountable kerbs discussion anymore. What I'm thinking is basically this https://youtu.be/6imqI8VfwNo:

• only one level separation: traffic and parking lane on the same level. Bike lane and footpath on the same level, which is different to the car parking and traffic lane.
  
• There may be a minimal level difference between the bike lane and the footpath using angled kerbs to separate them. In NL they would use tiles for footpaths and coloured asphalt for the bike lane to show the separation, but that's probably too much to ask here still.
• car parking is level with the traffic lane surface
• on the left of the car parking there's a standard height vertical kerb, which could be lined with bluestone for heritage purposes. This stops cars from parking in the bike lane as much as it stops them in the current set up from parking on the footpath (i.e., if you don't care about ruining your rims you can probably still do it)

We could simplify a bit and reduce building costs through a painted chevron on the left side of the parked cars rather than the strip of tiles in the video. It will achieve the same aim: to direct bike riders away from parked cars, but leave open the option for passing and maximizing the effective space optically

A couple more arguments for the mountable kerbs:

• optically, they widen the bike path, creating more effective space and allowing social (= slow) riding two abreast. The current separated lanes on La Trobe St, Swanston St and St Kilda Road are all about 2m wide, but it's still not comfortable to ride two abreast.
• forgiving infrastructure is especially important when riding with kids, who are probably more likely to swerve as they explore their surroundings.
• psychologically, they feel much less threatening than high separators who make you feel boxed in. 

[Jonathan Nolan]

Yeah, I understand. 

We pushed for this on southbank boulevard and I think we did pretty well to achieve something approximating it given Australian road engineering culture. 

The mountable curbs we'll push for again, but especially on the footpath side I don't like our chances. We'll see how it goes. 

As far as the level go... We've requested that the bike lane be raised at all intersections, hopefully that will get up. 

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[Jonathan Nolan]

One option we could suggest is to raise the curb without changing the bluestone. Let the bluestone stay but make it flat to the bike lane (or close to flat). Not sure how this would work with drainage though... 

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