Bicycle and scooter riders – most of them food delivery workers – are getting lost on some of Melbourne’s busiest freeways and tollway tunnels at a rate of almost three a week, new data shows.
CityLink operator Transurban said there were 57 incidents of riders illegally straying onto its network this year, including through the Burnley and Domain tunnels.
Cyclists and scooter riders are regularly causing chaos on CityLink freeways and tunnels.Credit: Transurban
That figure is up from 39 at the same time last year. There were 18 incidents in March and 17 in April this year alone.
Transurban head of safety Liz Waller said most incidents involved food delivery workers, who appeared to be led astray by their delivery or navigation apps.
“Even though there are signs saying cyclists are banned, they just end up in there,” Waller said.
“The issue really is the tunnels are not designed for cyclists or scooters – it’s just not a safe environment.”
Such incidents also cause chaos for motorists.
The toll operator is forced to shut down a lane of traffic and reduce speeds in the tunnel to 40km/h while an emergency vehicle retrieves two-wheeled interlopers.
Waller said the problem had always existed, but intrusions had become more frequent as food delivery services proliferated.
She said riders could avoid tunnels if they ensured their apps were set to bicycle mode – as that directed them around the tollways.
This year a man on a Lime-hired e-scooter was captured on a CCTV camera riding the length of the Burnley Tunnel.
Transport Workers Union national secretary Michael Kaine said food delivery companies put riders under extraordinary time pressure and would not always check they were on the safest route.
“When riders are held up by traffic or take a different, perhaps slightly longer route, they receive app warnings for being too slow that can lead to their accounts being deactivated,” Kaine said.
“Add to those pressures the fact that many riders are visa holders unfamiliar with local roads, and it’s unsurprising that these dangerous incidents are occurring.”
The Age revealed in December that the number of bicycle delivery workers suffering injuries was growing on Victoria’s roads, with 917 hurt on the job between 2016 and 2022. Victoria Police data showed 143 injuries in 2022, up from 92 six years earlier.
At least two food bicycle delivery workers have been killed in Melbourne since 2016, and a van driver died in a crash at Point Cook in September 2020. Nationally, at least 15 food delivery workers had died on the job since 2017.
A spokesperson for UberEats said the company had worked with Transurban to try to address the problem of wayward delivery workers.
“This includes reminding bicycle delivery people that it is important to choose a navigation app designed specifically for cyclists, not cars, to help avoid being navigated towards motorways and tunnels,” the spokesperson said.
“We always remind delivery people that their navigation map should be on cyclist mode.”
Food delivery companies DoorDash, Easi and HungryPanda did not respond to requests for comment.
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