A clash of wills !

The perennial battle between those who want to see Sydney city as the venue for bike traffic and those who demand priority for motor vehicles is about to take a new turn.   There are plans to create new bike paths in Liverpool street, between Day and Castelreagh streets, in Castelreagh street between Hay and King street - and in Park street between Elizabeth and Castelreagh.

This is the heart of the CBD and if implemented it will cause the city bus routes to be seriously disrupted. Inner city bus routes will have to be drastically changed to accommodate these bike paths and many people shudder at the prospect of all this coinciding with the installation of light rail into the city, further coagulating available road space as the work proceeds.

What galls many motorists is the existing network of bike paths - and the scarcity of seeing cyclists using them.   The environmental people use that time worn old mantra :   "  Build them - and the people will come " !    Unfortunately, that has not been borne out in fact.   This is just too big a city to consider riding a bike from the outer suburbs into the city - and it seems that the inner city residents are more comfortable either using their car or hopping on public transport.

There is another anomaly that needs clearing up.   What are called " shared paths " are an absolute disaster.
The thinking seems to be that both cyclists and pedestrians will be civilized people who defer to each other and get out of each others way.   Both are equally guilty of demanding right of way and this sharing option seems to have completely forgotten pedestrians pushing a kid in a stroller or walking a dog for exercise.
These shared paths are an ongoing battle of cuts and bruises, yelled abuse - and a legal no man's land !

Eventually, the CBD of a city like Sydney seems destined to become a huge pedestrian plaza, served by light rail from all it's perimeter.   It would require service traffic making deliveries and doing repairs to be restricted to a time frame in the early morning, before the shops open.   This is exactly how suburban shopping malls operate, except that it represents a larger size factor.

There is no point continuing with bike paths if they are not being used and now would be a very good time to settled the future of what Sydney looks like as a city as this century develops.  Settling on a plan will result in many crushed egos - but right now we are wasting a lot of money pandering to utopian dreams that will never eventuate.

Time for the city fathers to bite the bullet - and make some hard and fast decisions !