Riders in Melbourne's inner south appear set to gain a clutch of new pop-up bike lanes later this year, courtesy of the Department of Transport’s $13M pop-up bike lane program.
The new facilities have been previously adopted as key projects for the City of Port Phillip, but now not only will the routes be delivered sooner, the State will pay the cost, leaving $300,000 of Port Phillip funding available for future council-initiated projects.
The City of Port Phillip has formally endorsed four preferred projects covering:
- Three “shimmy" routes – informal bike riding routes
- Park Street (west) – Kings Way to Moray Street
- Bay Trail to Moray Street connection - Kerferd Road and Albert Roads to Moray Street
- Kings Way Connector – St Kilda Road to Moray Street
A copy of the mapped routes is here.
Although the DoT has yet to commit to the council’s preferred routes, the fact that the proposed projects have already been subject to favourable council consideration is a positive sign.
The state government’s pop-up projects are concentrated in bike-busy inner-Melbourne, having started in the inner north-east and wrapped themselves around the north to the unannounced projects in the west, and now to the south.
As pop-ups, the facilities are “infrastructure lite” – able to be adjusted, moved and even removed, depending on on-going evaluation.
Where successful—which is likely to be the case with most of them—they will be converted to more durable and permanent facilities at a future time.
The three “shimmy” routes to local shopping centres selected by the council are:
- Elwood to St Kilda East and Prahran (Dickens Street, Westbury Street, Carlisle Street, Williams Street and Nightingale Street).
- Elwood to St Kilda (Beach Street, Broadway, Mitford Street, Blessington Street, Shakespeare Grove and Acland Street).
- St Kilda to Albert Park and South Melbourne (Richardson Street, Longmore Street Cowderoy Street, York Street and Loch Street).
Park Street (west) from Kings Way to Moray has long been identified as a high priority link in the Port Phillip bike network.
And the Bay Trail to Moray Street – Kerferd and Albert Roads will be aligned to the Shrine to Sea corridor path project, about which more announcements are expected soon.
According to Port Phillip, the pop-up bike proposal is an opportunity to test potential layouts for Kerferd Road to inform the Shrine to Sea project.
"The delivery of protected bike corridors increases transport choices and safety for our community,” the council says. "They improve local access and assist in alleviating congestion as there is wider community appeal to use these type of bike routes.
"Temporary ‘pop-up’ bike lanes are less time consuming and costly to deliver because it avoids relocating gutters and kerbs etc.
"Bike corridors have the potential to increase social connectivity through increased transport choices as well as providing places that foster greater social interaction and informal recreation.”
Become our friend
Find out more about Bicycle Network and support us in making it easier for people to ride bikes.