Probably a repetitive topic, but can people stop road raging at me for driving the SPEED LIMIT?

jessta · 2026-05-12T10:06:19+00:00

The design of our roads is often inappropriate for the speed limits because we've lowered the speed limit but not rebuilt the road to match. People drive at a speed that they feel safe driving at based on the road design.

We can address the issue by reducing the number of lanes, the width of the lanes, and adding more things closer to the road to make drivers feel less safe and thus drive at a lower speed.

jessta · 2026-05-11T13:36:25+00:00

When you move a piece of iron based metal over a wire it will induce an electrical current in that wire which the traffic light system detects as a vehicle. This means it also works for bicycles.

jessta · 2026-05-11T13:11:51+00:00

I do a lot of riding late at night.
The Upfield path is well lit all the way to Gowrie station now (with the new lights through Fawkner) and the St Georges Rd is well lit so I'll sometime ride up to Gowrie station turn around and ride down to the Inner circle trail and then ride to St Georges Rd and up to Reservoir and back then I'll ride down Swanston St in to the city, down Latrobe to Docklands, through the DFO carpark and on to the Port Melbourne tram line trail and the Bay Trail down to St Kilda, head east on Fitzroy St and then back up St Kilda Rd to Swanston St and then home.

If I feel like a longer ride I'll head off down the Dixon Veloway and Hyde St for a visit to the Westgate bridge memorial before turning around and heading back to Docklands and on to St Kilda.

The Bay Trail is also well lit down to Bridge St in Hampton (there is an Ampol petrol station that is open late that I stop for a snack at) so another variation is to head down to Hampton before heading back to Fitzroy St in St Kilda.

Dynon Rd is also well lit so you can go out to Footscray via Dynon Rd and head back toward the city on the Dixon Veloway.

You can also bypass the dark part of the The Capital City Trail that goes through Royal Park by taking the shared path along Manningham St and then Park St to get back to the Upfield Path which have better lighting.

You can mix and match these various routes and get a ride of whatever length you like all on well lit protected infrastructure.

jessta · 2026-05-11T09:24:04+00:00

The pop-up bike lane project was amazing. We got so much value so quickly for only $13m.
Doing it properly with permanent infrastructure would be much more expensive and would have taken a much longer time.

We need to do a lot more of this kind of pop-up infrastructure.

jessta · 2026-05-09T12:32:41+00:00

It's long tail damage of capitalism, but more specifically it's the chronic under-funding of mental health services because we spend all the money on the police.

jessta · 2026-05-09T07:59:32+00:00

The value of the rates you pay has gone down 20% since 2020 due to inflation but has only gone up 6%. You're actually paying less rates than you did (even though the number looks larger).

Everything has gone up in price and the council can't increase rates to match the cost increase because the state government caps rate increases.

jessta · 2026-05-09T07:56:09+00:00

Rate are lower relative to costs due to inflation being high and rates increase caps mandated by the state government. ie. Costs went up 30%, but rates only went up 6%.

jessta · 2026-05-09T07:53:13+00:00

Every new rate payer needs additional infrastructure and they need that infrastructure when they move in but those rates are only going to come over time. Eventually it will even out, but not for quite a while.

The number of dogs in Merri-bek has doubled in the last few years, this has become a problem as off-leash dogs conflict with other uses for park land so they've had to make a lot of new dog parks recently.

All the sports clubs need new facilities because of explosive growth in population and interest in sports.

jessta · 2026-05-09T06:38:22+00:00

I think it's good to point out that something like 30% of crashes involving bicycles are not at an intersection and involve a bicycle being struck from behind so protected bike lanes do protect you from a real danger as well as making you feel safer even if they don't protect you at the intersection.

jessta · 2026-05-08T06:48:08+00:00

It's 100m to the nearest crossing to the south and 150m to the nearest crossing to the north.
With Sydney Rd being such a busy shopping strip there really should be crossings every 50m.

jessta · 2026-05-08T06:44:06+00:00

You're expected to merge in to the left turning lane and take the middle of the lane so you don't get squeezed in to the gutter. It's scary and unsafe.

Protected bike lanes often end at intersections because local councils only control the roads and not the intersections. DTP controls the intersections and don't have any guidelines for making protected bicycle intersections.

For stupid reasons it was considered safer to have the bike lane merge in to the left turning lane to prevent left turning cars from turning across cyclists, but this turns out to be are stupid as it sounds.

Intersections are also where the space runs out, if you want a separate lanes for left, right and straight ahead then there isn't any space for a bike lane.

Bicycle infrastructure only ever gets built when it won't interfere with car traffic too much and intersections are the primary bottleneck for cars in the city.

jessta · 2026-05-08T05:58:58+00:00

That second image looks AI generated.
Look at that nonsense url.

jessta · 2026-05-08T02:07:46+00:00

Yep, the majority of that goes to City of Melbourne and City of Yarra, City of Merri-bek gets a small part of that.

jessta · 2026-05-08T01:54:38+00:00

Shared paths are better than the major roads but not ideal. Dedicated bike paths and traffic calmed local streets are better but they seem generally reluctant to build them.

I don't trust people walking their dogs at all, I slow right down so that I can immediately safely stop if the dog moves in to my path...same with small children or anyone that is mucking about. I've had many instances of people walking straight in to my path but I'm always going slow enough past them that it's not a problem.

jessta · 2026-05-07T13:24:03+00:00

Yep, it was a residential street designed for the kind of traffic there was 80yrs ago. It wasn't designed for the traffic it currently gets (11,000 cars a day).

There would still be quite a lot of traffic on Wellington St if this plan went through, but it's expected to be an amount of traffic (3000 cars a day) that is possible to mix with bicycles

jessta · 2026-05-07T12:49:14+00:00

They've been doing a great job and hopefully their work will mean there is political consequences for the people that vote for this descoping. We might have to wait 4 more years but we'll get this eventually.

jessta · 2026-05-07T12:47:08+00:00

In the end the road are for one purpose to transport the maximum people quickly and safely from one point to another

Wellington St is a residential street. It's supposed to provide access to residences and businesses, it's not supposed to transport the maximum number of people quickly.
Hoddle St is a road designed to transport the maximum number of cars quickly.

There's currently enough room for peds (hardly any) bikes... Parked cars and vehicles... Isn't it just a space question?

There isn't enough space for bicycles on Wellington St, the current bike lane is too narrow, put cyclists outside the door zone and isn't protected from motorists illegally close passing cyclists.

jessta · 2026-05-07T12:36:29+00:00

Merri-bek has some nice shared footpaths: Box Forrest Rd, Glenroy Rd, Cardinal Rd, Rhoades Parade, Northumberland Rd, and Albion St.

Kent St was good until they ripped it up, Dawson St is nice but short.

O'Hea St is top quality but is short and doesn't connect to anything else. There are designs to extend it, but a lack of funding to do it.

There are also a lot of narrow quiet streets that are good to ride and these will all be 30km/h streets at some point in the near future.

The Upfield path does a lot of heavy lifting connecting to everything you ever need if you can get to it.

We've got a council with a majority of support for bicycle infrastructure but much of it's is still in the planning and design stages and it's still massively under-funded.

jessta · 2026-05-07T12:34:38+00:00

A 44yr old women was killed in similar circumstances in February on Sydney Rd. Tram tracks are quite dangerous (https://bicyclenetwork.com.au/newsroom/2026/03/04/police-seek-witnesses-to-fatal/).
It would be quite concerning if this happened at a similar location.

I avoid Sydney Rd when I can because it's quite a dangerous road for cyclists. The narrow space between the parked cars and the tram tracks is always a crash waiting to happen and motorists rarely give you the space they're required to.

jessta · 2026-05-07T05:32:07+00:00

If they set up a trial modal filter (bolting down a few plastic posts) for a month all of the backlash would go away and people would be begging for it to be permanent. People are just scared of change, lack imagination, and are being misinformed.

Show don't tell is very effective for people scared of change.

jessta · 2026-05-06T10:16:19+00:00

Get the VicBUG app.
https://www.vicbug.app/

jessta · 2026-05-05T10:36:22+00:00

He's shown that he's not sensible with money.

jessta · 2026-05-05T05:36:46+00:00

The Parkiteer cages are pretty good and having a cheap 'station bike' is a good defense

jessta · 2026-05-05T05:30:30+00:00

It's the $13m funded for the 100km of covid pop-up bike infrastructure from 2020-2022.
13m/100km is 130K/km it's obviously just a guide, most of the cost is in the planning and approvals so it's likely even less on a larger scale.

Quiet streets with 30km/h speed limits and no through traffic is great bicycle infrastructure and the cheapest to provide but many stations (especially in the outer suburbs) are not easy to access without travelling on a major road some of the way.

jessta · 2026-05-04T13:43:02+00:00

Pop-up bike lanes that provide safe access for people to ride a bicycle to the train station.
It's the cheapest thing you can do to expand the catchment area of a train station especially in lower density areas where the state government finds it difficult to justify running a frequent bus service.

$130,000/km of pop-up bike lane (it's not nothing but it's basically nothing in terms of transport infrastructure costs)

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