BACK PEDAL: High St bike lane rejection leads to strategy review

THE City of Greater Geelong council will go back to the drawing board for its cycling strategy after councillors again voted down a plan to build bike lanes along Belmont’s High Street.

The city will review its Principal Bicycle Network (PBN) and undergo more consultation with community members and state authorities to update the strategy.

Councillors had been due to vote on awarding a $2.8 million construction contract to build new bike lanes from Belmont to Waurn Ponds, including the High Street shopping precinct.

The project is a key pillar of the existing PBN, which outlines a “strategic cycling corridor” along High Street from the Barwon River to Geelong Ring Road, as part of a wider strategy to “provide cyclists with safe, accessible, and connected cycling routes within Geelong”.

The city had $2.3 million in funding from the Transport Accident Commission (TAC) to build the cycling link, which received council support in April 2019.

Councillors voted to delay a decision on the contract in July after hearing concerns from local business owners and have now voted to revisit the strategy altogether.

The plan had angered traders along the busy Belmont strip, who raised concerns with loss of street parking and business impacts.

Broader community concerns including safety and the project’s planning process also contributed to councillors rejecting the idea.

Cr Ron Nelson moved an alternate motion for the city to “instigate a strategic review” of the PBN with help from the Department of Transport, Regional Roads Victoria and TAC, and “include further feedback from the community”.

“This is an opportunity for us to reset and make sure we get this right for the people of Geelong, for cyclists and every road user,” he said.

“We need to build the right bike paths in the right places, not just say ‘we’re getting more money, we may as well spend it’.

“We’ll get the community onboard and build the right bike paths in the right places, for everyone.”

Cr Nelson said the state authorities and TAC had indicated their willingness to discuss alternatives to the current strategy.

Cr Belinda Moloney referenced concerns with the implementation of stage one of the Building Better Bike Connections project at Moorabool and Gheringhap streets and welcomed a chance to review the existing plan.

“This has caused a lot of community angst and frustration, and rightly so,” Cr Moloney said.

“We’ve had feedback from seasoned riders saying the first step implementation wasn’t great.

“If something is implemented and is broken, then we need to revisit that.”

Cr Anthony Aitken said the change in approach was overdue and said the city needed greater strategic guidance for its active transport planning.

“We support bike lanes, what we don’t support is developing infrastructure that creates division in the community,” Cr Aitken said.

“Authorities are not on the same page, so we ended up not having winners and losers, we had losers and losers.

“We need to take ourselves out of the mire that’s occurred on these issues and look at this from a strategic standpoint.”