Go Walkerville

Walkerville is a lovely suburb. It has geographically one of the smallest councils in the State and is full of tree-lined streets and beautiful historic houses. Like some suburbs in the east, it retains a village like feel.

In its Strategic Plan, the council's Goal 10 is "Accessible local services that support social interaction and promote physical activity". Strategy 10.4 achieves that by "[developing] local transport infrastructure that encourages walking, cycling and the use of public transport."

Walkerville Terrace is one of the few shopping strips that can almost be described as pleasant to ride along. Not because of its high quality infrastructure but because motorised traffic along it generally travels pretty slowly. It's especially slow during rush hour when you have a long line of expensive 4WDs filled with one person each making the huge long trek from Walkerville to the city. The painted bike lane allows you to sail past them all - provided you're not doored of course.

In keeping with Strategy 10.4 and as part of its redevelopment of Walkerville Terrace, Walkerville Council has done this to the cycle lanes along Walkerville Terrace:

People travelling by bike are now faced with a pinch point where, yet again, they are forced into faster moving motorised traffic. The important thing though is that there are nice cosy (and free) parking places for all of those 4WDs. If you look carefully at the width of the road now that the pavements have been widened, space has been set aside for the lane of traffic and a lane for parking. In other words, the minuscule amount of infrastructure that was there has now been removed to cater for free parking even though on the right behind where the picture was taken is an IGA with its own big car park and further up the road in the direction of the picture are a whole bunch of free off-road car park - all of them free.

Wherever you are, it's more of the same garbage.