Feature: Parramatta Cycling Report
Parramatta City Council are allocating an enormous $250,000 matched by the RTA to $500,000 to the cycling budget for the 02/03 Financial Year, which is great news to local cyclists and a sign of strong commitment by council. Well done PCC! This feature focuses on what's happening at Parramatta. There are a number of great projects in progress which is great news. We have compiled a detailed report on cycling issues in the Parramatta area. However, there are also a number of areas that could be improved. A detailed downloadable report (with photos) has been prepared outlining these.
The Good News
There are some good news coming from Parramatta Council. They have budgeted $500,000 (together with the RTA) to spend on Cycleways in the 02/03 Financial Year, which is excellent. We encourage council to approve this amount.
PCC will also be supporting Bike Week - they have put in a funding proposal to the RTA.
There are proposals to produce a brochure of cycleways and a self-guided tour, as well as having a ride-to-work day. Final local routes for this year have started.
PCC see the worth of a good Parramatta Valley Cycleway, and are tackling the many issues in getting this sorted.
Lastly, they are planning to do more at the end of Cycle Sydney. We think this is great since the RTA's Cycle Sydney is a great chance to promote Parramatta. Perhaps council could close down Church St and allow the ride to go through there, to show off our great 'eat street'. It would also encourage riders to return and have a nice lunch or a drink after the long ride. Thousands of cyclists participate in the ride.
Well done Parramatta Council!
Areas for Improvement
Unfortunately, there is still work to do. Our report on dangerous areas details several instances where roads have been made unsafe for cyclists, through the width and positioning of curb blisters and centre islands. They are ranked into three categories:
- Extremely dangerous - requiring immediate attention.
- Very dangerous - requiring attention in the very near future.
- Dangerous - need to be scheduled for work in the short term.
One of the key problems is that wide curb
blisters create squeeze points and the wide centre
island removes the road space once used by cyclists, forcing
cyclists into the path of the traffic. Alarmingly, this is
often done in recognised cyclist routes.
Some of the streets covered include:
- Wentworth Avenue Wentworthville
- Clyde St, Granville
- Oakes Rd, Old Toongabbie, south of Toongabbie Creek
- Caroline Chisholm Drive, Winston Hills
- Wentworth Ave, Toongabbie
- Hawkesbury Rd, Westmead
We appreciate council's continuing efforts to improve cycling in Parramatta. We understand, from council's perspective, that most of these designs were built using 'old' designs, which took a few years to obtain funding for. However, we now know better and need to do better.
CAMWEST calls on Parramatta City Council to build on cycling initiatives already underway by making council's entire road system cyclist friendly. Council has shown a great commitment in budgeting $500,000 for cycling in the next year, and we encourage them to use some of this to improve these areas. The road network is public property providing legal right of pass and repass. Road authorities have a duty of care to all road users to provide safe passage. As the RTA promotes: "The road is there to share". Cyclists require space to cycle, not compete unequally with motor transport for the same road space.
The Report
Download Parramatta Report (PDF, 686KB)
What you can do
See our Action Corner.
