Darebin Road Underpass and gap closer opened!

OK, this might not be as exciting as for example, news that the Darebin Creek Trail extension to the Main Yarra Trail being given the green light (this decision to this problem is currently being made by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT)) but it is still fantastic news for Darebin Creek Trail users.

The trail is now continuous from just north of the Heidelberg Road bridge in Alphington right up to Darebin Creek Reserve in Reservoir. This photo from the Bicycle Victoria website was taken looking south towards the bridge in October 2008, when the underpass was nearing completion, but the gap closer path was still under construction. Before the works, you would have to exit the trail at Darebin Road, cross the road, then travel down Ford Crescent for a few hundred metres to rejoin the trail. Now you can just go under the bridge and behind the back of the factories, all on the new expected standard for all major Melbourne trails, 3 metre wide concrete.

I have yet to have ride the Darebin Creek Trail, but a plan of action to ride it all myself would maybe consist of a train trip to East Camberwell Station. Yes it is a crappy station, but it is right next to the Outer Circle Trail, which I will then travel up north on to Chandler Highway, cross the shockingly narrow bridge (it used to be a rail bridge before it was converted to a vehicle bridge), travel east along Heidelberg Road, then somehow reach the start of the trail and zip up it, somehow bridge the gap in Bundoora, then travel right to the end at Epping North, then returning by train. If I do take this ride sometime, I will report it on this blog.

More information on the opening of the underpass and gap closing path can be found in the Victorian Government Media Release.

Looping Circuits: 65km Eastern Suburbs Creek Loop

I'm introducing a new type of blog post called "Looping Circuits". I will post up a review of a cycling circuit I have completed and commenting on it's pros and cons to give riders some ideas for some good trail circuits to complete if they are wanting something different in terms of riding environments.

This first circuit uses the EastLink Trail, a Jells Park un-named path, Scotchmans Creek Trail, Gardiners Creek Trail, Main Yarra Trail, Koonung Creek Trail and the Mullum Mullum Creek Trail (short section). All up it is very roughly 65km long. I managed to complete it about 4 hours 30 minutes, but that time includes strong winds, the use of a MTB, a on-road detour as a large section of the Gardiners Creek Trail was closed due to the M1 Upgrade and a rest at Dights Falls.

One fact to note is that I have never been on the Gardiners Creek Trail or the Scotchmans Creek Trail west of Blackburn Road. This ride was primarily a way of riding these trails for the first time. I also wanted to ride the trail around East Malvern before January 12, as that is when the bridge over the Monash Freeway (M1) will be demolished and a new cycle/pedestrian bridge will be built.

Here is a map of my route, with the base map coming from the brilliant OpenCycleMap, which is based off the OpenStreetMap site:

Positives:

Mostly off-road (excluding temporary Gardiners Creek Trail detour).

Many underpasses and bridges. There are not too many intersections to deal with and most are either local roads or traffic lights.

Mostly runs along creeks and through linear parks.

Virtually all sealed.

Links to many other trails along the way.

Negatives:

The on-road sections of the Scotchmans Creek Trail, but there is nothing that can really be done about this, unless you pay the residents to hand over a small slice of their land (2-4 metres from their back fence) to create room to run a shared path through it. If this unlikely concept went ahead, a shared path from Jells Park to the Watsons Road / Whites Lane roundabout is possible, which bypasses all the local roads through Wheelers Hill. On-road lanes would be applied to the rest of the on-road sections.
Gardiners Creek Trail detour (although it is temporary, it is still a negative, but at least a higher quality path will be built).

Not many directional signs. There are very good fingerboard signs to direct you along the on-road sections of the Scotchmans Creek Trail, but directional signage was lacking on the Gardiners Creek and Main Yarra Trails.

A few steep hills, mainly around Wheelers Hill and the Eastern Freeway area.

The Gipps Street and Chandler Highway steps. Both of these annoy me so damn much!

Some narrow sections which require you to take extra care and SLOW DOWN!!! I'm talking about the pipe bridge near the Fairfield Boathouse which needs the remaining pipeline removed and that side converted to a path as well.

The section of the Main Yarra Trail between the underpass to the Outer Circle Rail Trail and Bellford Road is quite dangerous as the path is narrow, unnecessarily windy and plainly quite dangerous considering it is on a quite steep slope. Tight almost right angle turns do not help.

Interesting:

The extremely long pedestrian underpass under the Monash Freeway in Mount Waverley. This was awesome to ride through and has to be Melbourne's longest shared path tunnel. A measurement on Google Earth told me it is an astounding 150 metres long!

The different types of surfaces and varying qualities of the trail, simply because there was so much variety. Some good, some bad. The section of the Gardiners Creek Trail where the pedestrians and cyclists are given their own space was very interesting. I wouldn't mind seeing this form of path in more places where there are a large amount of pedestrians using a shared path, such as in places like Jells Park and along the Capital City Trail where space permits.

The suspended footbridge under the Monash Freeway between the Main Yarra / Capital City Trail and Glenferrie Road was a totally different cycling experience. The unique red surface made it seem I was going quite fast up hill!

There is a short divided section of the Main Yarra / Capital City Trail next to the Yarra Boulevard which was quite different, all to save one large tree!

On a scale of 10, I give this looping circuit a 7. It loses points for lack of signage, poor standard of some sections of the trail and the two flights of steps.

Poll Results: Which trail(s) do you ride on most frequently?

Alright folks, my second poll has now closed. I give a big thanks to the 12 people that took their time to submit their votes. Here are the results:

As you can clearly gather from the results, 58% of voters use the Main Yarra Trail most frequently, which is no surprise at all, considering it is a direct route until you get to Yarra Bend Park, then from there on, people tend to go their own ways to their destinations, either taking the popular Yarra Boulevard, Capital City Trail or using inner-city streets. This is followed by 33% of voters using the Koonung Creek Trail, which directly follows the Eastern Freeway. It is well known that the Koonung Creek/Main Yarra combination is popular from the Doncaster/Nunawading area to Yarra Bend Park due to the few road crossings, fairly flat terrain (the major exception is along the Eastern Freeway between Yarra Bend Park and Bulleen Road where there are a couple of short, sharp inclines, depending on your direction of travel) and direct route. Coming in third is the Dandenong Creek Trail/EastLink Trail combination (I combined both since they basically run the same route and overlap a couple of times) and any other trail in Melbourne. The EastLink Trail has proved to be a fairly decent success, with it's superior wide concrete surface, good sight lines and gradient (Mullum Mullum section excluded) and decent, but not perfect directional and warning signage. The fact that 2 footbridges are also currently being built helps things, as well as when you compare it to the sub-standard Dandenong Creek Trail it has somewhat superseeded (that is, the sections around Jells Park / Bushy Park Wetlands and around Dandenong).

The conclusion is simply that off-road paths which are fairly direct, usually running beside a creek or freeway, which run for a fair distance come out on top for popularity with riders.

A new poll will be up shortly, so please participate. It would be nice to see 13 or more people voting this time around.

My experience with the Main Yarra Trail

Today I decided to ride a trail which I have never been on before.

The Main Yarra Trail is one of Melbourne's major trails, and one of the most popular.

Starting from Docklands/Port Melbourne and sneaking it's way past the CUB brewery, the Fairfield Boathouse, along the Eastern Freeway and through Westerfolds Park before ending in Templestowe at an unsigned intersection with the Mullum Mullum Creek Trail. I have always felt that the trail should be named in align with other trails, as the "Yarra River Trail", but I guess the "main" name is suitable for it, as it provides connections for a number of trails including the Capital City Trail, Sandridge Rail Trail, Gardiners Creek Trail, Merri Creek Trail, Outer Circle Rail Trail, Koonung Creek Trail, River Gum Walk Trail, Plenty River Trail, Ruffey Creek Trail, Diamond Creek Trail before finally ending at the Mullum Mullum Creek Trail.

For a trail with so many connections, the trail is currently insufficient in many ways including alignments, signage, line marking and surfaces. A trail of this importance should have high priority over what works should be done to it. It is simply not good enough at the moment.

I tried to navigate the trail today by simply following whatever signage had been installed over the trail and I was lucky I brough my iPhone 3G with the built-in GPS, which saved me having to go down a trail only to find out that it did not take me to where I wanted to go.

I rode from the very end of the trail at the Mullum Mullum Creek Trail to the turnoff under the Eastern Freeway today, and I will highlight the major issues I have with this trail.

• Signage: The signage along the trail is very sub-standard. Signs are very rare to find along this section of trail, especially between Westerfolds Park and Heidelberg, in which there were some very confusing intersections which can easily lead a casual rider astray, especially at a couple of locations where there is a Y fork in front of you with the option of taking a sealed path or a gravel path. Naturally, you would follow the sealed path you were already riding on, while the path you were susposed to go down was the gravel one. I'm also amazed I could get myself through Westerfolds Park via the 2 or 3 "Main Yarra Trail" signs which I encountered.
  
• Alignments: There are a couple of sections where the entire trail needs to be re-routed to give a more direct path and a couple of spots where the alignment should be re-constructed altogether. In Banyule Flats Reserve is the major headache. You can either follow the official trail, which is 1.56km long, or take the fairly level (hardly any hills) goat track shortcut which is only 0.76km long, less than half the official trail. There is also the underpass under Banksia Street in Heidelberg, which is shockingly designed on the northern side of the bridge. Not only is the path in a shocking condition, going south under the bridge was a nightmare, with my brakes on, I felt like i was going to flip over the handlebars. This needs to be fixed quick smart.
  
• Surfaces: The ideal shared path surface has always been asphalt, which is nice to ride on, but sometimes cracks can very easily surface, and grass gets in the cracks therefore damaging the trail. Concrete is the way of the future for all trails, despite some trails still being built with asphalt. For the best example of a fantastic trail with a concrete surface, ride the EastLink Trail if you haven't already. One gripe I have about some sections of a trail is the unnecessary gradients. Some spare dirt can easily be piled on top of an existing trail, then concreted on the top to avoid high inclines. This can easily be a great incentive to get more users on the trail. Remember that research done by Bicycle Victoria shows that sealed paths generate much more usage than gravel or natural earth paths.
  
• Line Marking: On all sealed routes, line marking is very important. It establishes where the trail should go. No line marking can easily lead to riders going on the wrong trail. People who go out riding without looking at cycle maps (look at the OpenCycleMap for Melbourne (you can help build it, it uses the OpenStreetMap database) http://www.opencyclemap.org/?zoom=11&lat=-37.85185&lon=145.0334&layers=B000), can easily get lost. Brilliant intersection signage along with road-style line markings give the rider much more confidence that they are going the right way.
  
  Thats all for now! I let alot off my chest with this post and how the Main Yarra Trail really needs to live up to it's name. Feel free to comment on any of the points in what I have written.