Tag Archives: Bike Path

“Missing Link” shared path getting closer

THE SHARED path linking Warrandyte to the Main Yarra Trail has made another small step forward.
A window for public response to planning application PLN22/0002 — vegetation removal associated with the construction of a public shared path — between Alexander Road and the Mullum Mullum Trail closed on September 21, and there were three submissions in response.
Meanwhile, Council will be hosting an information session on October 26, at the Warrandyte Community Hall (Senior Citizens Centre), for further discussion regarding the plan to construct a shared footpath along Taroona Avenue, connecting  Warrandyte-Heidelberg Road with the Warrandyte River Reserve/Everard Drive.
The Taroona Avenue Shared Path has been contentious.
In the multiple iterations of this shared path, extensive tree removal has required public advertisement of the works and has resulted in a community response against the plans — with feedback ranging from opposition to the number of trees being removed, the unsympathetic design which is out of character with the surrounding built and natural environment, and even some groups/submitters questioning if a shared path is genuinely required along an often quiet residential road, which only sees extensive traffic during large town events such as Warrandyte Riverside Market.
Council says the path will form part of its Main Yarra Trail Extension Project to facilitate the safe movement of pedestrians and cyclists through the local area in all weather conditions.
The forthcoming information session will allow community members to meet with Council officers and discuss possible solutions for completing this missing section of the Main Yarra Trail along Taroona Avenue.

The Main Yarra Trail Extension Project

The Main Yarra Trail will provide a seamless connection from Warrandyte to the CBD when completed.
The trail will benefit pedestrians and cyclists by joining the Main Yarra Trail, Mullum Mullum Trail and other trails.
The trail extension aims to deliver increased participation in physical activities such as walking and riding to school, shops, and work.
Linking the CBD to Warrandyte will also be a major drawcard for recreational cyclists and tourists.
The plan for this trail has evolved over 20 years, and is being built in stages:

Stage 1: Beasley’s Nursery – Alexander Road.
This 750-metre section of the trail will provide safe off-road access from Mullum Mullum Creek to Alexander Road, where it joins into the existing trail.
Construction is planned for late 2022 to early 2023.
Stage 2: Alexander Road – Pound Road.
This one-kilometre section from Warrandyte High School to Pound Road was completed over several phases between 2011 and 2020.
Stage 3: Pound Road – Taroona Avenue.
Council is working with the Department of Transport on the design of this section of the trail.
This 1,385-metre section includes steep and curved roads with heavily vegetated roadsides.
Council aims to reduce the loss of trees, keep access to residential areas open, and provide a safer path for the community.
This section also intersects with bus stops, so safety measures will be important.
It is due for completion in 2023/2024
Stage 4: Taroona Avenue.
Based on community feedback in 2019, Council is reviewing the design for the 400-metre Taroona Avenue section of the trail.

The trail extension is listed in several of Manningham Council’s strategic plans, including the Manningham Bicycle Strategy and the Active for Life Recreation Strategy.
Manningham Mayor Cr Michelle Kleinert said cyclists and pedestrians currently travel along informal and disconnected footpaths and arterial roads, which poses a safety risk.

“The Warrandyte Township is a major tourism and recreation destination on the Yarra River, on the edge of the Green Wedge.
“This trail extension will make it easier and more enjoyable for recreational cyclists and locals to access and enjoy all that Warrandyte and the river offer.
“This is a good thing for local business and tourism,” she said.

Council has already begun ancillary works along the proposed route of the trail extension with the recently completed barbeque area and bike repair station at Warrandyte Reserve; the new rest stop has already seen extensive use.
There is also a new bike repair station, picnic table, map board and drink fountain near Beasley’s Nursery.

Have your say

This information session has been on hold since September 2021 due to COVID, but residents criticised the last round of plans for excessive tree removal, impact on sports and market parking and a potentially dangerous road crossing near First Street.
This path will be built and will be with us for a long time.
As we discuss what we imagine Warrandyte to look like, this is the perfect opportunity to put this into action.

Date: Wednesday, October 26, 2022
Time: 5pm–7pm
Location: Warrandyte Community Hall, 8 Taroona Avenue, Warrandyte.
For more information, visit yoursay.manningham.vic.gov.au/main-yarra-trail.

Cyclist safety concerns on Knees Road

MANNINGHAM COUNCIL announced as part of their 2020/21 Capital Works Program, Knees Road, Park Orchards, would be receiving a long-awaited upgrade.
Knees Rd is a crucial local link in our community, bringing traffic into Park Orchards and Warrandyte. The upgrade aims to improve safety for all users, including motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians, and incorporates kerb and channel, new footpaths and shared paths, and a roundabout at the Arundel Road intersection.
However, Park orchards local Stephen Gleeson says the plans leave cyclists feeling excluded and unsatisfied.
“I’ve been riding bikes in Park Orchards for the last 26 years – every Tuesday and Thursday morning there’s a group of us here in Park Orchards who come together and ride our bikes”, he says.
Mr Gleeson has voiced his safety concerns to Manningham Council and recently wrote a letter to Ward Councillor, Cari Lange.
“The new works have narrowed the existing road considerably — the result is those bike riders, heading in both directions, will be pushed in with car and truck traffic.
“Vehicles will either have to slow down and travel behind the cyclist to avoid hitting the rider or enter the lane of oncoming traffic,”
These concerns run rampant among cyclists, due to the increased rate of cyclist fatalities in recent years, a report by the Australian Automobile Association stated that in the 12 months up to December 2020, 42 cyclists died on Australian roads, an increase of 7.7 per cent.
“It’s so bloody dangerous now.
“Cars just get so impatient — they pull out and pull over the other side of the road and pass me, then jam the breaks on because it’s a narrow road.
“Their [the motorists’] mentality is ‘what are you doing on the road?’ ‘why are you holding me up?’ and they’re totally right in thinking that, because roads haven’t been designed for bikes to be on there with cars,” Mr Gleeson tells the Bulletin.
As part of the upgrade, the Council will be building a 2.5m wide off-road shared path aiming to accommodate cyclists of all abilities, including children, to cater for the influx of students who ride their bikes to St Annes Catholic and Park Orchards Primary Schools. Manningham Council supplied Mr Gleeson with a response to his letter outlining the reasons why it chose to proceed in this manner, but Mr Gleeson feels the pathway solution will only add additional stresses, especially for groups of cyclists who wish to ride together.
Mr Gleeson notes the dangers of cycling on shared paths due to the “unpredictable behaviour” of other path users such as off-lead dogs, children, or cars reversing out of driveways.
“We estimate that upwards of 100 bikes go through Park Orchards, none of those cyclists will use that path.
“Have you seen a group of say 30 road bikes get up on a footpath and have to battle it out with kids on bikes, dogs off-leads and prams? Paths are dangerous too,” he says.
“What they could do is make the road wider, make a shoulder which is divided from the roadway where cars and trucks go, with a raised concrete strip painted a bright colour – make that a metre and a half for either side of the road, just make it separate,” Mr Gleeson says.
Mr Gleeson and the broader cycling community attest to the benefits cycling has had on their health, wishing more people would get on the bike.
“Making it safe for inexperienced bike riders will encourage more people to participate, it will be better for their physical, as well as their mental health,” he says.

 

Image courtesy Google Earth

Bike path goes back to the drawing board

COMMUNITY ACTION against the proposed Taroona Avenue bike path has won, and Council is going back to the drawing board to come up with a design more fitting with the surrounding environment and the needs of the community.
Following the advertising of an updated plan for the shared path in April/May this year; plans which left more questions than answers regarding the appropriateness of the design and which trees were going to be removed.
Nearby residents and users of Taroona Avenue and adjacent areas were spurred into action to submit their objection to the planned path. At a submitters meeting, in early June, a number of locals, including Jozica Kutin, Doug Seymour, and Warrandyte Community Association President Terry Tovey were in attendance and have supplied the Diary with the following comments: “There were quite a few people in attendance,” begins Ms Kutin.
“The council meeting chair pointed out that the application and meeting was only about the removal of trees — nothing else. “However, it was clear that many people wanted to, and did, express their concerns about the actual design of the path, the materials from which it is going to be constructed and the route it was taking.
“Doug Seymour presented an overview of the previous path plan (a board walk on the creek end) side of the road at the Everard end and suggested this was still a viable option — the council engineer didn’t think so — and pointed out that when they built boardwalks in Wonga Park, the residents did not like them,” she said. Mr Seymour told the Diary he had been nominated by the WCA in 2017 to work with Council on the original plans. In the June edition of the Diary, Manningham Mayor, Andrew Conlon said Council had “recently gone back out to nearby residents with an updated design” but Mr Seymour says neither he nor Bev Hanson, who provided consultation on the 2017 design, were notified changes to the original design had even been drafted.
“I don’t recall the final 2018 drawings being forwarded to Bev and me for comment; on reflection the 2018 location of proposed crossing could have been improved, but overall, the design had merit. “The latest design for the path departs significantly from that previous concept, particularly in the use of a rigid concrete pavement and the deletion of the boardwalk in favour of squeezing the path past a couple of those magnificent trees on the east (oval) side on the edge of the road pavement.
“The boardwalk solution at this tight spot guided users behind the trees, much as boardwalks are built around the world take us through sensitive forests without disturbing the habitat. “A method worthy of closer consideration by Council and, moving the path back from the road pavement also allows parking to continue. “Both editions of the design include a crossing from east to west near the intersection of First Street to avoid the narrow and vegetated verge alongside Andersons Creek as Everard Drive is
approached. “The current design locates the crossing on a crest allowing good visual checks but as a local objector pointed out at the Objectors meeting there is a boundary error on the drawings which complicate this detail. “Warrandyte’s impressive skills pool was demonstrated by the presentations at the recent Objectors meeting; I find myself working with locals who are positively working on alternative concepts to help present imaginative solutions to the forthcoming Community Forum,” he said.

Glenn Jameson drew the Objectors meeting to the need for improved attention to a good drainage outcome, point discharges being a big problem: “Curb and channel and drainage pits are proposed for a site that I’ve never ever noticed any drainage problems. Presently excess water flows into the creek along a broad flat creek bank area thereby avoiding hydraulic pressure causing erosion. How will the water collected by the proposed drainage system be treated as it goes into Andersons Creek?
If the road drainage along Everard drive is anything to go on, then it will be another dysfunctional road drainage effort by Council. Everywhere the road drainage goes into the Warrandyte State Park from Everard Drive, there has been massive erosion from single pipe discharge with unprotected impact points, which is still ongoing and which the Council have been unable or unwilling to find a creative solution to. Consequently, metres of soils have eroded from the Warrandyte State Park into the Yarra River causing all sorts of environmental damage. Trees have been undermined and fallen into the river; weeds have enjoyed the excess water; as well as creating eroding holes that are a danger to people using the park. Manningham needs and can do better than this.” Council had placed the path in its Bicycle Strategy Plan 2013 and had heralded it as one step closer to linking Warrandyte to the Main Yarra Trail, but as a local walker, runner and cyclist, Ms Kutin felt there were better ways in which Council could spend funds set aside as part of the Bicycle Strategy. “As a local cyclist, runner and walker — I use this area a lot. I was a bit taken aback by council representatives talking about this section ‘as an important missing link in the Yarra Trail’. I would have to say that the most important missing links were: between Beasley’s Nursery and the High School, then the section between Pound Road and Taroona Avenue — these sections have no paths and the alternative is walking or riding on the incredibly busy Warrandyte-Heidelberg Road. But, of course, these are difficult and presumably expensive sections to tackle. Taroona Avenue is low hanging fruit. I have witnessed my fellow riding friends being almost side swiped by trucks riding the section between Beasley’s and the High School — the truck in question having no regard for keeping their distance from cyclists. Touting of this section by council as an ‘important missing link’ misrepresents these issues.
It is the least important missing link — Taroona Avenue is a relatively quiet road for cyclists. Taroona Avenue could benefit from a path but if it doesn’t follow how people already use the road they will continue to walk on the road or the shoulder. “Take the path on Everard Road between Yarra Street and Taroona Avenue as an example — or even the footpath on West End Road. For some reason, people in Warrandyte love walking on their roads. The shoulder on the opposite side of the creek near Everard is very muddy at the moment — but this is also an informal over-flow parking area on busy weekends. As a cyclist, I’m likely to continue to use the bitumen on Taroona
Avenue to access the river path and surrounding areas — with or without a shared path,” she said.

On June 25, Council informed submitters that the advertised plans have been withdrawn “to allow for further consultation and time to review the design”. The email goes on to say: “A public information session is planned to be held at the Warrandyte Sports Pavilion, Warrandyte Reserve in coming weeks. This will be a feedback session on a suitable path and to discuss options to overcome the concerns raised by the community. I can advise that Council will not be proceeding with the proposed contract for the works and has withdrawn the contract.” WCA applauded the Council on their June 25 decision, and WCA President, Terry Tovey encouraged residents, and sporting groups to attend the proposed community session. “We are delighted that Council has responded to the 25 objections and the expert presentations made during a recent objectors meeting. “This side of Taroona Avenue is packed with cars during sports and market days, and we are therefore amazed that no parking impact study was undertaken by council to inform the design. “We would urge the sports clubs affected and the market committee to register their interest in attending a council forum which is planned to discuss the project,” he said. The WCA is currently working with residents and expert Association members to develop a submission setting out a less urban and more imaginative solution, which respects Warrandyte’s leafy bush landscape while maintaining much needed parking for community activities. Mr Seymour said the outcome of this whole process needs to consider ‘what works for Warrandyte’. “There is a body of opinion that Warrandyte does not need this path and in fact doesn’t want it because it would ruin a valued streetscape,”he said. The Diary will continue to report as this story develops and will publish dates for the community information sessions when they are released.