Plan to make CBD, Moore Park cycleways permanent angers community

Community groups are leading the protests against plans for the pop up cycleways in the Sydney CBD and Moore Park to be made permanent.

Bureaucrats have left the door open for controversial pop-up cycleways around Sydney to remain permanently, drawing renewed outrage from community groups furious over a lack of consultation.

The six supposedly temporary cycleways – erected in partnership between NSW Transport and the City of Sydney – were hastily installed last year in a bid to offer greener and safer travel alternatives amid the pandemic.

However, local community and cyclist groups voiced anger at a variety of issues, claiming the paths were dangerous, prevented emergency vehicles stopping, and had low usage.

Pictured is a cyclist on a pop up cycleway on Pitt Street. Although initially thought to be temporary, the cycleways now look to be permanent. Picture: Richard Dobson

Despite the health orders allowing their existence set to expire in March, The Daily Telegraph can reveal the state government has not ruled out making the cycleways permanent.

City of Sydney independent councillor Kerryn Phelps, herself a cyclist, said “a lot of boxes had to be ticked” before any of the six paths became permanent, adding that it was a “poorly conceived plan” which had “a lot of knock-on adverse effects”.

“I have huge problems with some of them – some of them are just in the wrong place,” she said. “If there was a high level of usage and a high level of consultation it’d be different, but any move to make them permanent has to be done in the right place with community consultation.”

Di Anstey, of residents group Friends of Bridge Road, said opposition was continuing to rise six months after a cycleway was installed along the busy Glebe street.

“The community certainly doesn’t want it to be there … The more people see of it the more opposed to it people become,” she said.

Cyclists on a pop up cycleway on Moore Park Road in Sydney. Picture: Richard Dobson

She claimed at least two accidents involving cyclists and vehicles had occurred on the cycleway in the past fortnight.

A representative of another community group, Friends of Moore Park Road, queried how a cycleway along the road would work when the Sydney Football Stadium, currently under construction, opens in 2022.

A Transport NSW spokesman said the community would be consulted if a formal proposal to keep the cycleways was tabled. According to the department, use of the six cycleways has risen by 9 per cent to an average of 15,000 trips a week since September.

A City of Sydney spokesman said it had already consulted the community on a plan to make the cycleway along Henderson Rd in Erskineville permanent, but that no decision had been made on any of the other pop-ups.