On Your Bikes Back of Bourke? Right.

On Your Bikes Back of Bourke? Right.

Never mind getting on your bike, here in Darlinghurst the prospect of taking to the street by foot is harrowing enough. Back behind the construction barricades of the new, multi million dollar bike lane, RTA traffic planners long ago placed a round about at a busy pedestrian intersection. Cars rat run across Liverpool past the East Village pub and from what I can glean, vehicles are not legally obliged to yield to pedestrians who huddle by the side of the road impatiently waiting for a break in the constant flow of traffic at peak hours.

After living in Sydney for fifteen years, I still find it hard to believe that pedestrians do not have the right of way when they step down from a kerb at an intersection. Just a block up from the East Village, at Crown Street, like a well trained monkey I recently hit the pedestrian walk button seconds before the light turned green and bravely stepped down from the kerb. The RTA rejected my application to cross because it was not submitted in a timely fashion and in a town where the walk signal does not automatically appear I was nearly mowed down by a young bitch on her mobile phone who hurled abuse at my audacity to step into the street in front of her turning car when I did not have a walk signal. A few blocks up on Oxford Street party goers regularly attempt to cross Crown Street after assuming someone else applied to the government for pedestrian access. Pedestrian deaths have plagued Oxford Street for years as intoxicated revellers step into the street and automobiles demonstrate their legal right of way in this town with lethal force.

In a state where traffic planning policy is made with the primary goal of moving cars and cargo along city streets, pedestrians and bicyclists are collateral damage. An American academic from outside New York City recently spent a year in Sydney and noted “an incredible level of aggression from Sydney motorists”. The problem is not that Sydneysiders are inherently more anti-social than New Yorkers or Californians when they get behind the wheel of a car, but that unlike in those states, in New South Wales pedestrians do not always come first, bicycles second and cars last under state law.

Clover Moore attempted to bypass the State’s dysfunctional road rules by creating controversial, dedicated bike lanes with barriers that will keep cars and bikes safely apart. Eighteen months before she was resoundingly re-elected Lord Mayor, Clover Moore announced plans to build up to 55 kilometres of new separated bike lanes in order to increase the number of bike trips in the city by ensuring the safety of cyclists.  Two years later, the City’s bike routes are only 5 percent built with many of the cross city lanes still in the planning phase. But already she has gained the honking ire of Alan Jones and his drive time listeners, who have lost parking spaces, kerb side access and what was once a clearway during peak hours.

The City started building $70 million worth of bike lanes in an unhospitable end of town. In Alexandria, when Council removed hundreds of car parks along Bourke Road in order to make room for dedicated bike lanes, they irritated some very wealthy land owners, including the Hannan family, who owns more than a billion dollars worth of real estate on more than 16 hectacres of prime urban real estate along Bourke.  Cashed up after the $530 million sale of the Federal Publishing magazine and suburban newspaper business to News Limited — they have just spent more than $30 million on upgrades and expansion at their South Sydney Corporate Park in Alexandria redeveloping nearly 100,000 square metres of commercial space along Bourke, complete with a bike lane running outside their door.

The fact that they were allowed to build massive new car parks along Bourke has not assuaged the wealthy land owners’ anger over losing street parking. The founders of the Wentworth Courier, Central Magazine and the entire chain of Courier weeklies, the family owns IPMG, one of the largest commercial print companies in Australia. They employ more than 1600 people and turn over of more than $500 million per year and still print the Courier newspapers under a commercial arrangement with News Limited. The Hannans are the chief protagonists in a threatened class action suit against the City and they have some very loud and obnoxious friends including Alan Jones and Murdoch’s right wing attack pack at the Daily Telegraph. No matter how many ads the City throws at the evil empire in a futile attempt to appease the beast, Murdoch’s hacks will always be back to put the boot into Clover. This week the Telegraph ran a picture of Clover outside her Redfern home as she boarded her rate payer funded, chauffer driven Prius. Both the local member and the Lord Mayor, Clover would probably find it difficult to read briefing papers on her bike.  Taking on Sydney’s auto erotic culture and some very wealthy land owners is proving a risky business: last month Alan Jones accused Clover of hypocrisy for doing work on her airconditioned garage in which her husband parks their family car. The Hannan family would have liked that.

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