The Cycling Promotion Fund of Australia has just recreated the now famous Munster transport photo from over twenty years. The original is the top photo while the Canberra is the lower one. It is a excellent demonstration why private car travel is not the smartest why to get about in an urban environment. As the press release states
“In the space it takes to accommodate 60 cars, cities can accommodate around sixteen buses or more than 600 bikes.”
This is very valid point but I would push it a little bit further as they are talking about area, not traffic lane length. The Bus used was a Standard 12m rigid, and the average car is 5m long, so if you times 60 cars by 5m you get a queue of 300m of cars. Then divide that by the 12m Bus and you get 24 buses in a single lane that only 60 cars would take, not including the space between each vehicle. If you include the metre that you would have between each vehicle you would fit in another bus, so that is now 25 buses.
I have to say the 600 bike claim I find a bit of a stretch as they would have to be very closely parked. That said most racks that are around the place do allow for that kind of density of bicycle parking. Traffic lane length on this one is a little harder, as multiple bikes can ride alongside each other in a single traffic lane where that is not the same for car/bus scenario. With that it could be assumed that 3 bikes across could fit into a typical 3.5m traffic lane and each bike is 2m long with a meter gap between each bike. There is 69 bikes, three across so 69 divided by three times by 3m (length of bike plus gap) equals 69m of bicycle traffic. Therefore 300m of car traffic divided by 69m of bicycle traffic times by 69 riders. I know this is all long winded but the point is, In traffic you could fit 300 bicycle riders into the a single traffic lane that it takes 60 cars to occupy.
Ofcourse this is all getting very technical and the dynamics of all these figures change once they start to move and area is also relative to speeds but the point is. Cars take up to much space in an urban environment and most sensible thing to do is to encourage people to ride a bike and to use public transport where riding a bike is not practical or possible.
I will leave it with the youtube clip from the photo shoot
I have to say instead of a negative TV media story a good one for a change this time from the commercial station Channel 7. It was the typical Car vs bike vs Public Transport in this case the bus. The starting point was in Yeronga down near the river and the End point was Bike (cbd) Car (Bowen Hills) and Bus (CBD).
In no great surprise the Bus lost out. This is because the route 107 is a needlessly windy route that has stops within 50 meters of themselves within Yeronga itself. This would make any bus route overly painful and slow. Stops so close to each other that you can throw a rock between them are stupid and wasteful. This is a route that needs to be fixed in the Bus Review that is about to happen. Luckily this route does use the Busway system but the damage was done, travel time over 50 mins
The car came next. In no great surprise it got caught in traffic. But of course this traffic was created due to so many people using there car for trips that could of been done by other means. Travel time came in at 25 but it did have to travel a fit further.
In what would be common sense from such a close suburb the Bike won and won by a long shot. Travel time came in at 15 minutes. I have to say this was quite a good time but it did go straight to the stereotype of male in Lycra on a road bike. That said the route used would of been along Annerley road, a road that has a bike lane all be it a doggy one at times. You can see in the footage him racing up the beside cars in the bike lane. If the bloke wearing Lycra was not enough of stereotype him saying it took "some effort" was enough for me to slap my head with a thud. I have never seen riding as an effort but that is me. That said it was still good to see the bike beat the car.
I have to say for my inner city cross town commute riding a bike is faster then the Bus even with it being mostly Busway. My normal Travel time for the bike is 28 mins, where the Bus even with perfect connections comes in at 35mins plus. As for the Car I have been told by a college that lives near by it is usually 20mins, mind you that is not including the walk he has t do after finding a place to park.
PS I with correctly like the Video in place as soon as you tube search function works properly.
All in all a welcome story about how bikes can make a very quick trip into work. Now only if they do the same story but with a woman on a city bike coming in from Toowong. I can wish.
"Almost nothing signifies progress like building new roads" this is a quote taken from Tony Abbott in the link above. Honestly is this guy for real! This quote was made during an announcement regarding road funding. Now don't get me wrong funding towards roads is important but not in our major cities. The fact is over the past 50 years governments keep spending more and more on roads and it is getting us nowhere even faster then it did before.
Within this funding totalling almost $4 billion is $1 billion for the Gateway Motorway. Now the Gateway is a very important road but the fact is Brisbane's Public Transport is facing an meltdown. The Busway system is facing gridlock at the main choke point Culture Center Busway Station. This is so bad that during afternoon peak over twenty buses can be seen waiting to access the station. It is also so bad the newest BUZ route the 340 is the first bus route to be directed out of Culture on becoming a BUZ route when it originally serviced the Culture Centre Busway station. Translink says it is to provide better connection to the Gabba and the route 29 and while there is some truth in that the fact is culture is at capacity. Then there is the Rail system, the Marivale Bridge is expected to be at capacity by 2016. The State Government both previous and current agreed that a new crossing the Cross River Rail is required and both agreed that it would need majority funding from the Federal Government. Why did Tony Abbott not pledge funding at this announcement as he said he had consulted with Infrastructure Australia!
Then there is the road network. The fact is the majority of congestion on the road network including the Gateway is because the Public Transport network is not appealing due to decades of underfunding. Much of the congestion is due to people driving into inner parts of Brisbane them being Charmside(north), Carindale (east), Indooroopilly & St Lucia (West) or Garden City (south) points that should be the easist to access. A perfect example of under funding is the recently opened Northern Busway. Busways are excellent forms of public transport infrastructure and make bus travel as pleasant as rail travel but are suppose to be dedicated with no interaction with the general road network but the newest section has a 1.5km gap where buses have to mix it up in general traffic again. Now this was to be a BUS LANE to make it a little faster but politics got in the way and they have not been installed as required. Now this would require on last estimate around $1 billion to provide the required tunnel and Busway station at Windsor Train Station. This current gap heavily limits the busway capacity and decreases it's appeal.
Then there is the bikeway network or lack of it. Many tens of thousands of trips a day could be taken off the Public Transport and road network if there was a network for safe travel and I bet the funding towards the Gateway does not include a bikeway even though it is travelling through metropolitan Brisbane. To say it would not be used is an out and out lie. The current parallel bikeway that only runs as far as Toombul to Boondal is used by commuters. It is a long route and does a dirty big dog leg but it is used and is quite fast with it being almost dead flat and reasonably straight. It is used mostly by people of the North Eastern Bay suburbs to access the inner northern parts of Brisbane and even some going further into the CBD.
The fact is a single lane of
rail line = 30 000 people per hour
Busway = 18 000 people per hour
bikeway = 1800 people per hour @ the fraction of the cost of a roadway
freeway lane = 1800 cars per hour @ 1.2 people per hour that is 2160 people per hour
All this points to one simple fact, even if the new upgrade to the Gateway widens it from 2 to four lanes only 4320 extra people per hour can be carried per hour in each direction. This is less then the capacity of the current services on the South East Busway in the counter peak direction! or just over current capacity of counter peak services on the rail line between Central and Northgate. All in all a waste of scarce funds at uncertain times like we are currently in. Then there is the fact that people that have to live in car dependant areas have to dedicate more of there limited funds especially if they lose there job to transport because they have no other options!
As far as I am concerned this $1 billion should of gone towards the Cross River Rail project. Funds should directed to where they are needed most and where they can give the most benefit to everyone. Giving funds to a road project when a cities Public Transport system is about to meltdown is about as stupid as one could get!
And this guy wants to become the Next Prime-Minister of Australia!
here is some footage from You tube of the Cultural Centre Busway station during afternoon peak.
