Feelin' Hot, Hot, Hot!

This week in Melbourne has been increadible weather wise! Unfortunately, this extreme heat wave has forced me to not go riding (for those who don't know, I currently only ride a bike for recreation/fitness). Hopefully I will get to go out next week when it's abit cooler (even though it's only going to get to the low 30s). In the meantime, I will write a post on something which I happened to compile before the heat wave. Stay tuned for that post.

Poll Results: With on-road cycling, how far are you willing to go?

Alright, my third poll has now closed. Thanks to the eight people who had their say. Due to the nature of this poll, there is not too much I can comment on unlike my previous polls. The results are shown to the right:

It shows that visitors to my blog are cycling enthusiasts so to speak, which means people who are serious about cycling as well as the casual rider is also interested. It sometimes amazes me how many people are willing to participate in the "man vs. machine" fight for road space in a regular traffic lane. Personally, I would stick to nothing more than a marked bicycle lane but I have been on roads with a wide left lane before.

A new poll is now up. As always, feel free to have your say by choosing the option most applicable to you.

Gallery: Burwood Highway Pedestrian Bridge

Sorry I didn't post these up on Friday as I previously stated. I simply didn't have the time, but I do now. Here is a few quick snaps I have taken of the current state of the construction of the Burwood Highway Pedestrian bridge. Riders who do not reside around the area and only cycle around this area occasionally should find the following images useful.

Approach to Burwood Highway on the north side.

Closer shot of the approach to Burwood Highway on the north side.

Burwood Highway northern ramp.

Damaged EastLink Trail sign which has been tossed aside as construction continues.

Burwood Highway northern ramp as seen from southern side.

New bridge spans which were delivered to the site on Wednesday.

Another obscured view of the two spans.

Close-up view of one span. Notice the handrails.

Where the southern side ramp joins the existing trail.

The southern approach ramp.

I simply cannot wait until this bridge is finished, along with the Maroondah Highway bridge later this year (hopefully).

What trail am I riding on?

Although not a common issue on Melbourne's bicycle network, in the eastern suburbs, there is an emerging problem with the newly implemented trails which have recently been constructed. It is hard to know what trail you are actually riding on!

Take the example of these four trails: The Mullum Mullum Creek Trail, Koonung Creek Trail, EastLink Trail and Dandenong Creek Trail all intertwine and link and it has only been since June this year that the problem has been created. The simple question of "What trail am I riding on" needs to be answered. I will explain it as easily as I can here.

There are 2 parts to this post. The first is actually finding out what each stretch of trail is named. The second is an analysis of the intersection signage and why this confuses so many people! I will go through the first part initially. Please click the map below to view the full size.

ORANGE: Mullum Mullum Creek Trail
GREEN: Koonung Creek Trail
RED: EastLink Trail
BLUE: Dandenong Creek Trail
GREY: Other major trails
Dotted lines: Proposed trail / trail under construction
I will go through the intersections at a future date.

In quick site news, I have also updated the top banner. I will change the banner on a regular basis to show the site is still active as well as places along Melbourne's network which I believe are perfect for placement in the top banner.

Route Improvement Update: Burwood Highway Pedestrian Bridge

Just an update on the construction progress of the Burwood Highway Pedestrian Bridge at the intersection of Mountain Highway. For those with a foggy memory, the EastLink Trail currently crosses at this T intersection via three separate pedestrian activated traffic lights, which at the current moment, if a rider abides by the law and only rides when given a green man/bike light, it could easily take five minutes to cross from one side to the other! The new bridge would slash riding time to around 30 seconds. Quite an improvement I must say.

It was announced in a letter to local residents last November that the bridge should be finished early this year. The bridge reached another milestone today with the early morning delivery of the 2 bridge beams which will be joined together to construct the span over Burwood Highway. Whilst the design is different to other EastLink pedestrian bridges, in which there only the path and side walls, this bridge has the path, sides as well as a metal structure held up by poles with go up above head height then over the path as a partial covered way kind of structure. I will try to get some photos tomorrow and update this post.

In other pedestrian bridge related news, the Maroondah Highway Pedestrian Bridge has started drilling the pylons into the ground on the southern side for the access ramp to the main span while the East Malvern Pedestrian Footbridge is now CLOSED. A detour has been put in place along Malvern Road. I feel for regular Gardiners Creek / Scotchmans Creek Trail users having to put up with these long-term detours. At least the upgrade results are almost always worth the detours.

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.

Blind Creek Trail signage improvements made thanks to MBR?

You are probably getting abit tired of Blind Creek Trail directional signage posts but this should be the last one unless major improvement works are taken out.
Over a month ago I emailed Melissa Sparrow, Sustainable Transport Minister for Knox Council with suggestions for improvements they could make to the directional signage they are currently installing around the minicipality. I have had no reply so after the new year begins, I will send a follow-up email to the generic general equiries department of the council to find out if she has at least acknowledged my opinion.

Since all the signage was installed in early November, there have been two improvements made to the signage, but another error is made which adds to the lack of planning.

I present to you audience, the life of the installation of a bicycle trail directional sign:

The final product is shown above! It only took abit over 1 month to cook up. As you can see, we now have another reference to the Stud Road Trail, this time in the form of "Dandenong Creek Trail (Via Stud Road)", which is more in keeping with the sign at the Stud Road traffic lights, but is still slightly confusing with the other sign listed below...

At the intersection of the southern Burwood Highway Trail and the Blind Creek Trail, the sign was initally placed off the actual path where users will never see it. Since I posted the photo and my diagnosis on this blog, the sign has since been relocated along with the planks being swapped around for some reason, probably by workers re-assembling the sign and simply placing them in the wrong order. There has also been some minor tagging by vandals, but that is naturally expected in these areas and the signs look like they have been made to be vandal-resistant like the Metlink signage used around Melbourne.

Now I need to e-mail Parks Victoria to voice my opinion on the current state of the sub-standard signage of the area around the intersection of Dandenong Creek Trail and the Blind Creek Trail as well as Jells Park, again all after the new year.

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.

All trail intersection signage should be like this...

If there is one thing I love with our bicycle network, it is the feeling I get when I reach an intersection where two or more trails meet and seeing high quality accurate directional signage! Here is a fantastic example of planning gone right with the intersection of the Dandenong Creek Trail and the EastLink Trail in Jells Park South. It makes me wonder how they managed to stuff up the signage at all the other intersections along the EastLink Trail while this intersection gets the royal treatment!

I am just happy that the signs also have correct grammar as well as arrows that point in the right direction. Does anyone else know of any other perfectly signed intersections around Melbourne besides my example and the one near Dights Falls?

(Thanks to the Bicycle Victoria website for these two images.)

Sorry guys, I'm here!

Sorry for the delay readers. My holiday and lack of internet access kept me from adding entries to this blog, but all is now well.

Thanks to the 9 people who have so far participated in my latest poll. So far, the Main Yarra Trail is the most popular, which backs up my review of the Main Yarra Trail quite well.

New posts will be added this week, including a bicycle network improvement which could have resulted from posting the problem on this blog!