Darebin Council draft plan calls for more shared roads where cars would be “guests”

CARS will become “guests” in certain streets under a plan by a Greens-dominated council to dramatically increase walking and cycling.

CARS will become “guests” in certain streets under a plan by a Greens-dominated council to dramatically increase walking and cycling.

The City of Darebin, which includes Northcote and Preston, also aims to slash the speed limit to 40km/h across 30 per cent of the municipality.

The council’s new draft plan for 2017-21 has been branded as “anti-car” by a free market think tank, but Darebin said it was only following what many other councils have already done.

Under targets in the plan, private car use would be reduced to an average 13km per day per person by 2020, while $6 million would be invested in the first year to “dramatically increase opportunities for walking and cycling”.

The plan also includes “converting some roads into shared streets where cars are guests and where green space, walking and cycling take priority”.

The plan said that residents were heavily reliant on cars for local trips, despite 82 per cent working “locally” in Darebin, including in surrounding municipalities and in the inner city.

Evan Mulholland, from the Institute of Public Affairs, said:

“Turning existing roads into ‘shared streets’ is more lunacy from an anti-car council that should focus on collecting rubbish and fixing existing roads.”

“The so-called ‘progressive’ Darebin Council are jumping in the time machine to the early 1900s to the invention of the automobile where cars were merely guests alongside horses and carts.”

Darebin’s Greens Mayor Kim Le Cerf admitted that calling cars “guests” in the draft plan didn’t “reflect our intent” and would be changed in the final document.

City of Darebin Mayor Kim Le Cerf. Photo: supplied

“What it refers to, albeit rather clumsily, is a plan to establish a safe cycling route along a residential street that will work just like Canning St in Carlton, which has been very popular with residents and people travelling by bike,” she said.

Cr Le Cerf also said that Darebin was way behind other councils in introducing 40km/h limits.

Only one per cent of Darebin’s residential streets had the limit compared with 100 per cent in Yarra and 70 per cent in Port Phillip.

“Speed reductions in residential streets are welcomed by the vast majority of residents where we have already rolled them out to improve safety and reduce rat running,” she said.

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