City of Greater Geelong claim to have 115km of bike paths (as per the Council Meeting Minutes from October 2023). We have been unable to find these paths. Lets investigate the information provided and see if we can find them.
Great video. My city has been through 3 phases of infrastructure building and the first was a lot like this. In the '90s some engineer who didn't seem to do any research or leave his office and picked some back streets that could be shared bikeways. They sent out some city workers to put up some green signs and had someone in marketing highlight the roads in green on a drawing of the city alongside some recreational paths. Thankfully after 30+ years we have now mostly made it through the "paint a line on the road" phase and are now getting some decent separated infrastructure although all those old routes still exist in some places.
I'm still trying to get a response from COGG as to where the 115km of bike paths are. I dont think they can find them as they no longer respond to my emails. It will be interesting to see what the stats say in this year's update in October. I am planning a review of the Bellarine Rail Trail soon. There are some really fantastic bits, but some of the road crossings are a bit ordinary. The COGG map also shows the trail being sealed all the way from Drysdale to Queenscliff, so i will have a look at that.
I live in Torquay and would love to be able to ride from the Surf Coast into Geelong. The only way to do it is down the SC Hwy with cars and tracks flying by at 100km p/h, or fighting my way through the SC Hwy in Armstrong creek, or Grovedale battling traffic.
That would be awesome and heavily used IMO. Anglesea road is 80kmh between the roundabouts before/after Bellbrae and Geelong - still dicey but 20% less terrifying. Then you can take Ghazepore down to the path near WP Bunnings and its path all the way to CBD/River or with a teeny bit of road on to the QCliffe path.
It appears you have the same problem we have; nobody building and mapping this infra actually use it. I can't help wondering why they go for a degree in civil engineering, since they obviously don't bike or even walk enough to know what's out there. Great video -- cheers.
interesting! but i for one think that painted bike gutters should be included in the statistics (in their own category) because as a novice cyclist who is very unfit, i cant match the speed of cars so i avoid roads that dont have bike lanes as i would just hold drivers up which would annoy them and cause danger for me. but on bike lanes, i can travel at my own pace. of course, theyre still unsafe, and dont do much to encourage others to ride bikes but theyre better than nothing!
City of Greater Geelong have informed me that bike lanes are not included in the bike path statistics as they are in a different category. So far they have been unable to tell me the number of kilometres of bike lanes. Doesn’t seem that they have good stats on any of the bicycle infrastructure.
