The Real Cyclists of Melbourne

Stereotypes can bias thinking about any topic, and cycling has its own image which has been carefully cultivated by the interested parties. But real cyclists are mostly a world apart from the images pushed out by mainstream media and you can make your own generalisations from this collection of real people cycling in Melbourne city.

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Queuing across Intersections

Private motor transport carries the minority of passengers into and around the city but gets the majority of the space. Trams, trains, busses, bicycles, and walking all use space more efficiently so carry more people in a smaller footprint, but it only takes one car to block the way for all.

Bypass the bypass

No matter how good the infrastructure and connectivity is, some people demand more priority for themselves. Swanston St in Melbourne is car free for length across the city with the roadway given over to trams and bicycles yet still some cyclists opt for the footpath. Not for a lack of alternatives but to save a few precious seconds in their busy day.

Alluring Pedestrian Crossings

Taking all the desirable properties of a pedestrian crossing and applying them to a location where there is no pedestrian priority, true disaster style. With a paucity of guidance for pedestrians at intersections in the standards and manuals its left up to the imagination of the car centric road designers. What we get is inconsistent and dangerous pedestrian facilities.

Pedestrians Racing the Lights

Transport in the city of Melbourne is dominated by pedestrians. Slowly streets have been closed to private vehicles while retaining the iconic trams to carry people across the dense grid of roads, but priority still remains with motorised transport. In the rush to move more people through the same space the speed is excluding some people from safely walking.

SkyBus compromise Airport transport

Searches for transport to/from Melbourne Airport (IATA: MEL, ICAO: YMML) still get dominated by the SkyBus service. They themselves now operate wider services and compete/combine with the government public transport to offer quite a few options with little way to compare between them. So how do they compare on a competitive route? We’ll show you who’s cheapest or quickest.

Misrepresenting Cycling

The cycling routes through Melbourne city are not just discontinuous and incoherent, but also invisible for much of their distance. Where it is either safe or permissible to ride a bicycle is not always clear, leading to much confusion from people trying to navigate their way around the city by bicycle or other users not expecting bicycles sharing their space. But efforts from the council don’t seem to be improving much of this.

Melburnians don’t drive far

Its easy to believe everyone else behaves just like ourselves do but reality is often radically different. Private motor vehicles are the dominant transport method but how are they actually used? Continuing with the VISTA survey data we can look at how far Melbourne vehicles travel each day.

Accessible Transport

For all the effort put into making public transport more accessible how much is it actually improving? We can look to the census travel to work data for a representative example of mode share and how this has changed over time.

Getting on Busses

Another round of level crossing removals and the train replacement busses are out in action on the Frankston line, but whats on the ground has some glaring problems. They’re obvious to able bodied people but quite the barrier for those with mobility difficulties.