Bicycle Network: Behaviour

Important on-road bike routes are often on the tram and bus network. We support changes that improve the world for bike riders and public transport passengers.

The tram network is being upgraded with many new features including:

• Mark One Super Stops - Collins and Swanston Streets
• Ride over/drive over platforms - Danks Street South Melbourne
• Behind the waiting passenger platforms - Whitehorse Road, Collins Street bridge
• In front of the waiting passenger platforms - no example yet
• Platforms that block the road to bikes - under construction at Bourke and Swanston, proposed and withdrawn in Clarendon South Melbourne.

We are working with Yarra Trams and VicRoads to ensure that tram works produce a positive result for riders as well as tram passengers.

A large part of the tram upgrades will be improving and redesigning tram lines and tram stops. The Dept of Infrastructure has developed a Tram Toolbox which outlines options for upgrading stops. The toolbox considers potential impact on cars and other users but not bikes. Many of the options could impact negatively on bikes.

Most either:

• reduce the remaining road width to be shared by bike and cars, or
• take the tram lines to the kerb (or closer to the kerb) and force cyclists to cross the tram lines at an acute angle and risk getting their tyres caught in the lines. They would also potentially catch riders between tram and kerb as tram approaches a stop.

We have written to the department regarding these concerns and asked them to rewrite the toolbox with consideration of the impact of proposed new treatments on cyclists.