Merri-bek BUG

News from Kevin Ayrey, the Open Space Planning Landscape Architect at the City of Yarra:

From around September 1st to 30th the City of Yarra will be carrying out works to improve the shared trail between the footbridge over the creek at Rushall Station, and the East side of the High Street overpass. The works will realign the shared trail and increase the width to 3 metres, as suggested in the Merri Creek Shared Trail Review recently conducted. In particular, it will reduce the steep grades just after the footbridge heading East, and just before going under High street bridge. This will improve safety for all users, and provide a suitable sized path for future users. The area under the bridge will be slightly raised and graded to drain to eliminate the ponding that has occurred hear. The existing path will be removed and revegetated.

The works have been timed to coincide with the Clifton Rail Duplication Works, so that disruption to cycle and pedestrian traffic will be only slightly greater than is in place with current diversions. There will be times during the works when there is no access to this stretch of track. At these times alternative routes will be shown.

I have enclosed an image to give a broad idea of where these works are taking place. We will be working closely with the contractor to minimise disturbance to vegetation outside the proposed path area, and to revegetate where necessary.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any further queries.

Kevin Ayrey
Landscape Architect

Open Space Planning

City of Yarra PO Box 168 Richmond 3121

T (03) 9205 5721 F (03) 8417 6666
E Kevin.Ayrey@yarracity.vic.gov.au
W www.yarracity.vic.gov.au

On Monday night, Moreland City Council adopted an amended budget that includes $291,000 for additional cycling infrastructure!

Thanks to everyone who helped in the campaign, including Toby, Rod and Anna who spear-headed the BUG work, the various BUG members who assisted, Bicycle Victoria, councillors and others.

The Draft Brunswick Structure Plan is now out for consultation. The plan is the local implementation of Melbourne 2030. It sets out the long term mud map for the future of Brunswick, it details how the activity centre will develop and what needs to happen to make it a reality.

Toby Archer, from Moreland BUG, has been lucky enough to have been involved in the community steering committee. He is strongly encouraging BUG folks to get along to one of the community information sessions and make a submission to council. Its a great chance to have an impact on what our city will look like in the future. There will also be a Public Debate at the East Brunswick Club (280 Lygon St, East Brunswick) on 25 July.

For more info go to:
http://www.moreland.vic.gov.au/services/brunswickstructureplan-fr.htm

The Moreland Leader has an article on Cr Mark O’Brien’s interpretation of council’s bike (and pedestrian) infrastructure spending and Cr Jo Connelan’s response.

The BUG is encouraging local cyclists to send a letter to The Moreland Leader about O’Brien’s take on council spending and his specific targeting of cyclists for a user-pays approach to infrastructure and safety.

PS. Mark – did you realise that Sustrans is partially funded by donations from local government?

Moreland BUG has made a budget submission to Moreland Council in an effort to have the budget allocation for cycling increased.

Check the budget submission out and come along to the BUG meeting tomorrow night for a discussion about this and the other BUG campaigns.

Firstly, a huge thanks to everybody who has sent emails and helped with the Council Budget campaign so far. There’s been a constant stream of emails going through to the Councillors, meetings are underway and the local media has been good to us!

The final vote on the budget won’t take place until 21st July, and in the meantime it is crucial that the BUG keeps up the pressure. Please put the following key dates in your diary and I encourage as many people as possible to attend at least one of the Council meetings to ask questions and show support.

1. Written submissions due by 5pm, Thurs 26th June, via post to Moreland City Council, C/- Derek Madden, Locked Bag 10, Moreland 3058
2. Verbal submission hearings from 6pm, Wed 2nd July at the Municipal Offices, 90 Bell St, Coburg. A couple of BUG folk will be making verbal submissions and we’ve been advised that having a lot of supporters present will help our cause.
3. Council Meeting, 7pm Wed 9th July, Fawkner Senior Citizens Centre, Jukes Rd, Fawkner. A strong show of supporters asking questions about the budget at this meeting will be very important – this is the tactic the Coburg Pool campaigners used to successfully get the pool reopened during summer.
4. Council Meeting, 6pm Wed 21st July, Council Chamber, Civic Centre 90 Bell St, Coburg – the council will adopt the final budget at this meeting.

More info:

http://www.moreland.vic.gov.au/news/1consultationpublicnotices-fr.htm

Over the coming months, the City of Melbourne will be preparing the 2008 Melbourne Bicycle Account which will be released at Ride to Work Day in October.

This year, the City of Melbourne is asking all cycling and photography enthusiasts to send in images that represent the true character of cycling in Melbourne. The best photographs will be selected for the next edition of the City of Melbourne’s Melbourne Bicycle Account (MBA) 2008 with photo credits. All winners will receive a $100 voucher from CBD Cycles. Check out the 2007 Melbourne Bicycle Account for an example of the type of images they are looking for.

So why not combine your passion for cycling and photography to come up with a photo which shows off Melbourne’s unique bicycling culture!

Photos must be taken within the City of Melbourne municipality. All photos need to be 300dpi and of a high resolution (at least 2MB). Please send your photos with details of the street and suburb and a completed photo release form for each photo to stuart.outhred@melbourne.vic.gov.au by Monday, 1 September 2008.

See the City of Melbourne website for more information, including release forms.

News from Anna Strempel (the Moreland BUG convenor):

Hi all,

At last night’s Council meeting Councillor Andrea Sharam proposed an amendment to the draft budget to increase cycling expenditure by almost $300,000 to bring it in line with the $5 per resident benchmark that Bicycle Victoria recommends.
Four councillors voted in support of the amendment (Crs Alice Pryor, Mark Higginbotham, Andrea Sharam and Jo Connellan) and four voted against (Crs Daniel De Lorenzis, Milad El Halabi, John Kavanagh and Mark O’Brien). Councillors Kathleen Matthews-Ward and Anthony Helou were absent. This left Mayor Joe Caputo with the casting vote; he abstained from voting which meant the amendment didn’t go through.

There is still a good chance to get the amendment up and get some significant $$ spent on cycling in our municipality; the budget is up for consultation over the next two weeks and during this time we need to make it really clear to those councillors who didn’t support the amendment that this is something the community wants them to do. So I’m urging you all to write letters, email or call Crs De Lorenzis, Helou,
El Halabi, Kavanagh, O’Brien and Caputo to express your opinion.

Councillor contact details are available online, including phone numbers and email addresses.

It’d be great if you could cc me to emails or let me know about any phonecalls you make or letters you send so I can keep track of the campaign.

Cheers, Anna

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Moreland City Council have released their draft budget for next year and you can see it here.

Here is an update from Paul McKay:

I have had a fair read of this and tried to save some time for others by preparing a summary of the cycling highlights below (basically council is proposing to spend 320k instead of what we and BV reckon is fair $711k – ie $5 per person of council funds). It is a long document and this was hastily prepared so it would be great if others checked my bits.

Anna has sent emails to councilors and Toby (anna and I cant make it) is hoping to be at tonight’s council meeting at

Wednesday 11 June 2008 at 7 pm
Council Chamber, Brunswick Town Hall
Corner Sydney Road & Dawson Street, Brunswick

I reckon Toby would love to see some friendly faces and bike helmets at the meeting if any others can make it.

Also the next week might be a good time to make sure your views are heard. At this point we understand that Councillor Andrea Sharman will be putting an appropriate amendment tonight and we are unclear of the position of other councilors. This is the site that has their contact details.

Here is Paul’s email with his full analysis of the budget:
paul_mckay_email_11Jun08.pdf

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There is a planning meeting tonight (Wednesday, 4 June) to work on the campaigns around:

a) the cycling component of the upcoming Moreland council budget (remember to ask your local councillor why the spend rate on cycling infrastructure in this council is so low compared to other councils; also worth asking them what their stance on cycling will be if they plan to stand for re-election at this year’s council elections), and

b) the state government’s intentions to extend clearway times on Sydney Rd (presumably as part of their visionary plans for celebrating peak oil!)

The meeting will be at 7pm at Paul McKay’s house. Contact Paul or Toby Archer for more information.