16 Feb 23 | By pp-admin
You want to ride into Canberra but your only option is a busy road ride. You get together with your neighbours and campaign for a bike path, after much lobbying, the ACT Government finally builds you… a dirt track!
This happened in Hall where residents demanded a safer way for riders and other people on mobility devices to go from Hall to the Barton highway.
Earlier this month, Pedal Power’s Executive Director Simon Copland met with Robert Yallop and Lee-Ann Brodrick from the Hall and District Progress Association to discuss the need to build a properly sealed cycle lane and footpath along Victoria Street in Hall.
Victoria Street is the busiest street connecting Hall to the Barton Highway and the rest of Canberra. Only four years ago, after much lobbying, the ACT Government finally agreed to build a path along the street, ensuring people didn’t have to ride on the road to get to the rest of Canberra. But instead of building a real path they constructed this cheap, dirt track!
This kind of track isn’t accessible and in poor weather, such as rain, it becomes unusable.
This leaves people riding and sometimes even walking or using mobility scooters along a busy road. This is a particular problem in the mornings and afternoons when children from Hall ride to school in Gungahlin and back home again.
“This is a classic example of what we call a ‘missing link’ in our cycling and active travel infrastructure.” Says Simon. “It is missing infrastructure such as this that stops people getting on bikes and other mobility devices. It’s not good enough. We support the district association’s call for this track to be converted into a properly sealed path for cyclists, pedestrians and users of other micromobility devices”.
Pedal Power will now be working with the Hall and District Progress Association to get a proper path built.