What makes a GOOD bikeway? Ranking Brisbane's bike routes
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- Опубликовано: 30 июн 2024
- EDIT: I noticed after exporting a bit of a glitch at the end of one of the sections. Sorry it's not up to my usual standards.
Join me for a cycle tour through Brisbane starting in Toowong in the inner west, through the CBD, then head south to Nathan, and then west back to the Centenary Bikeway at Darra. But just taking a tour isn't fun, so I'm going to rank the bike routes based on a range of criteria and whack them in a Tier list.
The criteria I used were, in order of weighting:
1. Level of Traffic Stress (1-4 lower the better) - weighting: 20
2. Comfort - shade, gradients, wayfinding etc (1-5, higher the better). W: 10
3. Connections - what destinations and intersecting routes are along the way? (1-5). W: 10
4. Crossings - are they prioritised? Do you have to wait an eternity at lights? (1-5). W: 7
5. Upgrades - are there any upgrades vaguely planned, funded or under construction? (1-3). W: 3
Overall scores out of 50.
Depending how this goes, I might add to this tier list with future bikeway tours.
It's a long video, but you can jump to whichever section you're interested in. If you're interested in trying the route, it's here:
/ strava
0:00 Intro
3:27 Sylvan Road
8:15 Bicentennial Bikeway
12:32 Goodwill Bridge to Kangaroo Point Bikeway
15:46 V1 Veloway to Nathan
21:30 Griffith Uni to Salisbury
23:47 Salisbury to Ipswich Motorway Bikeway, Rocklea
31:13 Ipswich Motorway Bikeway to Oxley
35:10 Oxley to Centenary Bikeway
41:53 Summing up
Chris, it would be good if the summary was its own video. It would be the summary to send to all the local BCC councillors about the ranking in their area. Your commentary is really good and balanced.
Could be a RUclips short
Love this video! As a commuter from Chapel Hill, I would love to see cycle infrastructure improvement on Sylvan Road, Russell Terrace, and Jenkinson St.
Loved this format. It would be great if you're able to do more.
Came here looking for new pathways to skate around Brisbane and get to 9:18 and there I am am skating along 😂
Not going to lie i have been tempted to do the same as you on the weekends! When I saw you I instantly wanted to do it lol
You should do a similar video on riding into Ipswich. I have done the ride a few times and I'm shocked with how good some parts of it and how appalling the same parts are further ahead.
As a rider from the far north of Brisbane (Redcliffe actually) with the misfortune to work at Archerfield, I often wondered how to get from the V1 across to Archerfield. Kessel Rd and Granard Rd were definitely a no go zone so it is interesting to see your route. Incidentally, what bright spark put the bike lanes (*cough* - paint) at the Kessels Rd/Mains Rd intersection!
Hey, I really appreciate the effort you put in to this. I'm a new rider and unfamiliar with the city so this has been very informative and well structured. Thank you so much!
I'm glad it was useful for you, thanks for watching!
Thanks good video. Brizzy has come so far with the bike ways. Wasn’t so long ago we had none. Commuting from hill end to fortitude Valley in the 90s, I got hit five times in the space of two years, including leaving a body shaped dent in the side of a delivery van 😂
Sheesh, that's awful. yeah things have improved in the last decade, but still a long long way to go!
Living in Waterford, the V1 vellaway has opened up so much for me as a cyclist. With the soon to be opened section from Springwood to Loganlea rd and the Loganlea rd upgrade. I should be able to ride from my house to Southbank with minimal road travel.
I just last Saturday rode from Gaza St, where I exited the Freeway, along the vellaway to Southbank to watch Riverfire. Easily outpacing traffic on the M1. Same going back after Riverfire.
Also. There is a new Railtrail being built on the old Bethania to Beaudesert rail line. It will go from Bethania to Logan Village. Which links up with the Logan Village/ Yarrabillba bikeway.
Cheers. Yeah I love the V1 extension to Springwood, and the rolling upgrades going on further south. Also really looking forward to the extension of the Logan rail trail.
I like this format!
Suggestion:
Start at Garden City, up the Bulimba Creek Bikeway, Gateway Bikeway, Airport Bikeway, Kedron Brook Bikeway, North Brisbane Bikeway, Victoria Park, Kurilpa Bridge, Southbank, Stanley St / Annerley Rd Bikeway, PA Hospital Bikeway, Norman Creek Bikeway (cos you've already done the V1), and finally back to Garden City.
I'm tired just reading it... but good route, I'll look at it!
This was actually so insightful, I lived in Germany for a year and honestly life was amazing just riding everywhere - you could go to the other side of town so easily and so many students would ride to school. Australias networks definitely shadow in comparison.
I miss biking but living in north brisbane trying to get to the cbd for work makes it difficult as a commute option, even just riding to the local train station is so uncomfortable with 80km/h roads and you're forced to ride on the shoulders of the road.
Thank you for this, if you ever do any north Brisbane routes I would definitely love to watch!!
that's some fire work man! love it. _JC
Interesting to see that your Darra Station -> Beaudesert Rd route is nearly exactly the same as the one I plotted out when I decided to try riding to work for a couple months. The only difference is I went up through Bannerman St to get to Oxley Rd
Loved this one. I didn’t know about the Salisbury connection so I will try it out next time. 🚴
There is a much better and safer connection if you continue to follow the Griffith Nathan ring road to the next right hand exit, long downhill descent into the back of Salisbury near Aldi which connects with the bikeway along beaudesert road. All very poorly signed :(
You are far more kind to Australian bike infrastructure than I am. I would basically shift all these down a rank.
I think your traffic stress calculations are too lenient as well, given anything short of full separation when >30km/h is LTS3 and going around parked cars in the bike lane is LTS4 in my opinion.
I now finally understand your big gripe with sliplanes! While I get the greater speed argument, they always seemed safer than turn-on-red because you only cross traffic once at a good angle for eye contact. But I didn't realise the crossings weren't often marked in Queensland. Down in Melbourne it's rare to find a sliplane without a zebra crossing. To prove your point, I also find most drivers give way too.
Gateway,enoggera creek,kedron brook are also good networks
Well done Chris. I used to live in Bris and use some of these Bikeways. I’ve gotta say that a decade later, I can’t believe that there is not already a Cycle overpass to get over the Dean St and Miskin St Crossings and onto Sylvan Rd in a sensible fashion. Miskin Rd crossing in particular is just stupid and dangerous beyond belief, in my opinion.
Yeah those crossings are bad, especially Miskin St. The only option they investigated was an elevated bikeway that started in Anzac Park, went above the bus station carpark and Miskin St then lowered back down at Sylvan Road. The elevation required to accommodate large vehicles on Miskin Street was significant, and required relocating a lot of power lines and other infrastructure.
Long story short, it would cost $100m or so and just can't be justified.
Of course a raised, priority crossing on Miskin Street could be done for 1/1000th of that, but the potential for traffic to bank back into the roundabout makes that a non starter. Short of blocking Miskin St as a through road, I can't see anything happening sadly.
If you live on the north side of Brisbane you’re screwed, we have very little and very disjointed bikeways
All depends what area. I can go from Chermside, east to the Gateway Motorway then north to Redcliffe. Turn around and head south to Toombul then west to Mitchleton. All that way and only a couple of kilometres of quiet back streets.
@@2jbass is there an easy route into the city for the purpose of commuting to work?
Planning to do a north side route review soon - riding to Nudgee Beach and maybe back down to Hamilton North Shore and through into the CBD via Howard Smith Wharves. See if I die or not...
Other than a missing 500m from Junction Road to Price Street along Dickson Street, yeah, there's a good route into the CBD from the north side now. The North Brisbane Bikeway. Just need Brisbane City council to pull their finger out and finish their bit.
Come North to do the same. And make sure you shame BCC for the missing Stage 5 of the NBB!
That'll be my 4th video shaming BCC for that, but you bet! lol
@@ChrisCoxCycling Do that 4:30pm on a weekday outbound for full effect. The serenity, the serenity, the serenity, the WTF dumpster fire, the serenity, the serenity, ....
@@nigelstewart9982 if only it actually got to Chermside as originally planned.
I have ridden on the v1 veloway twice, once from brisbane all the way to gold coast, took several hours with stops in the middle, and a couple of bike pushing because I was exhausted pushing against headwind after yatala on gold coast highway, second time is from gold coast to brisbane also via v1 veloway, easier and faster since no headwind, finishing in a shorter time than the other way around. Gold coast bike infrastructure is much worse than brisbane though, with almost no dedicated bike lanes, and sharing road traffic is required
I'd say that the first one, sylvan, actually rates 4/5 for connectivity. It connects to the botanical gardens, too, and to the transit station and a mall. Overall, that's great.
Yes, it's very much a great access to destinations. Unfortunately some of the actual connections from the bikeway to those destinations isn't ideal. Like getting to Toowong Village or Toowong Train Station is actually not that easy, even though it runs almost straight by. Or getting onto Kurilpa or Victoria Bridge.
Still, it is very very good.
How do you go uphill so fast?
Are there any maps of the route taken?
I'm interested in the oxley to centinery bikeway section.
Pretty much this:
maps.app.goo.gl/wrhn2vYhhLNcSt4s9
I'd like to hear the gopro traffic noise rather than background music. A night time ride to assess lighting and safety for women/kids would be great too. Thanks!
You make a good point about lighting. It's a bit hard to visit a lot of these bikeways at night - mainly because, well, I have a family and have stuff I need to do with them. Noted about traffic noise - I hate it, but maybe some people like the "real" ambience of engines and tyre noise.
A map of the route taken might have been nice. Having a hard time to recreate your route!
I included a link to the route in the description.
@@ChrisCoxCycling Thanks!
Quality content Chris. Once you leave the V1 the quality goes down hill quickly. At least metaphorically.
Hi Chris, really enjoyed your video, thanks. Ive recently moved from UMG (V1 lover) over to Collingwood Park and have yet to try the ipswich motorway route from Dinmore to Western Freeway Bikeway (past Redbank Plaza, Goodna and Wacol). I'd love to see a video of yours on the route!
Traffic stress is subjective. As someone who grew up riding before the existence of cycling facilities I find Sylvan Road marginally less stressful than the Bicentennial bikeway. Along Sylvan Rd the cars travel slowly, are generally civil, and are travelling in the same direction. The confusion at intersections is a problem, but otherwise it's a section I feel fairly comfortable with. In contrast I find the Bicentennial Bikeway somewhat chaotic. Pedestrians and dogs frequently spill over onto the bike section, or just wander across without looking. Cyclists frequently ride on the wrong side of the road. Riding against the traffic at night is often blinding. When it is busy there are cyclists that take too many risks. When cycling upstream along I am constantly changing which part of the cycle lane I am in in order to avoid the risk of collision. Along it's full length from Toowong through to QUT I average 2 exasperated sighs per trip.
Interesting. Almost like internalised car brain? I don't mean that in a rude way, but if you've got used to cycling in a road environment, that would seem more natural than a more human environment.
Like, I can do vehicular cycling, but I hate it with a passion and it's not what riding a bike should be like. To me that's utterly stressful and unpleasant.
@@ChrisCoxCycling It's more that my brain is trained and brought up on understanding riding in traffic. Though I should add, that was the traffic in the 70's and 80's, not so much the traffic and the road system we have now. As for bicycle lanes, when they came in I hated them, as I felt it limited what I could do from a safety point of view, but not limit the cars who I thought would ignore them. Things a completely changed from that point of view for me, and it was Sylvan Road that changed my perspective. If you think Sylvan Road is uncomfortable now, you should have ridden it when the limit was 60km/h (not obeyed), no school zone, and no road markings except the one down the middle.
How long is this entire loop?
I'm still right at the start, but I wonder if LTS couldn't expand to add a little more nuance. The Bicentennial is a less stressful ride than the fully separated parts of the NBB (e.g. Bridge Street), for example, which are less stressful than the plastic bollard separated sections (Dickson St), _all_ of which are still less stressful than your LTS of 2.
Yeah it's subjective. I would probably put the NBB bits with just plastic barriers and armadillos as LTS 2 to be honest. From Price Street to Junction Road it is LTS 4 IMO. 60kph is FAST, there's parked cars, roundabouts, it's just awful, and that's the bit BCC just keeps squibbing on delivering.
any chance of a gpx? might have to do this loop
If you look in the description I have a link to a route in Strava, which you can export as a GPX.
I note that you gave the Goodwill Bridge section the same score for upgrades as the Bicentennial. But the way you spoke about them indicates it should be otherwise. The Goodwill is getting no upgrades, but the Bicentennial is actually going to be *downgraded.* Perhaps a -1 would have been more appropriate to represent that?
I did think about a negative for upgrades for the Bicentennial - I am that bitter about what Queens Wharf are doing...
@@ChrisCoxCycling rightly so. That downgrade is infuriating!
Pretty much all our on road "bike lanes" are terrible and mostly unfit for purpose. Living in hope things get better one day.
I think there's room for improvement.
how well are they all lighted at night?
Good question, and it's something I'll pay more attention to in future route reviews. Most of them are pretty good, but the ones that are shared paths along creeks, very rarely they're lit. More of them are getting done, but there's certainly some eerie bike paths at night.
Bicentenial I think should have some points taken off due to its elevation and proximity to river. I think its good being on the river but as we know Brisbane river floods and theres no alternative, plus council is hesitant to move cars to allow bikes to safely travel down Corro drive.
Yeah, and even with king tides that happen a few times a year, the river tends to go over the bikeway in some parts. Something that will only get worse with global warming and rising seas too.
@@ChrisCoxCycling Last year I was going down vulture, across GBB (on the road) and onto Corro when the bikeway was closed or turning onto the ICB from Musgrave road and turning right to Corro. Im lucky im confident doing this but i know a lot of poeple who were stuffed and were not able to ride because they weren't comfortable going any other way to the city
18:20 I’ll take that challenge.
Too late now. The detour is no longer required ;-) But don't worry, I'll find another detour and challenge you to get lost on it!
@@ChrisCoxCycling thanks!
With any luck I’ll be able to tell left from right.
15:38 There is a planned bike overpass for this.
Yeah, massively expensive. Just close the road to cars or make the bikeway cruising prioritised and that'll improve things enormously.
@@ChrisCoxCycling is what it is, at least it's being improved
North Brisbane bikeways are missing
This was just a southside loop. It's not claiming to cover every bike route in Brisbane.
Moderately interesting topic, but 45 minutes? 🥱
I don’t get these types of comments
Who goes onto a small RUclips channel who’s just sharing their passion, just to give such superficial and useless criticisms?
Is it that being a dick is just an emotional outlet for you people?
That's what chapters and skipping functions are for.