Adelaide Advertiser: Ride at your own risk

Potholes, broken glass, litter, rubble, parked cars, spill lanes, - cycling lanes strewn with obstacles that make a daily commute an exercise in survival. (AdelaideNow would like to hear your horror stories on two wheels. Scroll down to the comment box below.) That is before taking into account interaction - sometimes frighteningly close - with traffic. Today is National Ride to Work Day where about 70,000 people nationally and 2200 in South Australia aim to highlight the health, environmental and traffic advantages of cycle commuting. But in Adelaide, many riders run a dangerous gauntlet because the basics of cycling infrastructure are being all but ignored.

Bicycle SA general manager Christian Haag said SA had spent the least per capita on cycling infrastructure for the past three years. Taking figures from the Cycling Promotion Fund, the national advocacy arm of the cycling industry, Mr Haag said SA spent only $2.20 per head on cycling infrastructure - or roughly $3.45 million - compared to $3.70 per head in Victoria, $4 in Queensland, $4.65 in Western Australia and more than $10 in New South Wales.

He said the northern suburbs bore the brunt of the lack of spending but the disconnected network threw up pitfalls and obstacles across the metropolitan area. “There’s a whole swag of trails, routes and lanes that terminate abruptly and make no sense and obviously create an environment that’s fundamentally unsafe for the user,” Mr Haag said. “We are well able in Adelaide, within our resources, to adequately separate bike lanes from parking lanes from vehicle use lanes.

“Work on this has been done in Victoria, Sydney is looking at separated bike lanes and we are starting discussions with the Adelaide City Council about incorporating separated cycling lanes within the CBD.” Adelaide Lord Mayor Michael Harbison is making the environment a priority in his re-election attempt and demanding improved cycling facilities. “We don’t have enough bicycle lanes and the ones we have are not as good as they could be,” he said. “People want to be healthy and they enjoy cycling but you’ve got to make it realistic and at the moment it’s not.”

Greens MLC Mark Parnell advocates a large increase in funding to bring Adelaide in line with European cities that are seen as icons of two-wheeled transport. “Something like the Tour Down Under puts about $16 million in the state economy,” he said. “The cycling budget is a couple of million. We are not getting anywhere near enough money spent on cycling. “I’d be doubling, tripling, quadrupling the cycling budget and focusing on making the existing road network safe.”

The greatest disappointment to Bicycle SA is the lack of consideration for cyclists in the planning for the new Northern Expressway and it is calling on the State Government to match the cycling facilities provided for the Southern Expressway. Road Safety Minister Carmel Zollo said the Government was committed to improving the safety and convenience of cycling. “We take cycling safety seriously and have a number of ongoing initiatives and approaches for improving cycling safety,” she said yesterday. “That includes improving cycling infrastructure, conducting awareness campaigns . . . and providing bicycle education for school children.”