A Motorcycle Ride with Alistair Coe MLA (Liberal spokesman on Transport)
Many months ago the President Jen Woods and the Road Safety Officer Pete Major of MRA ACT had the opportunity to meet with Mr Alistair Coe Liberal Member for Ginninderra and Mr Jeremy Hanson Liberal Member for Molonglo and discuss a range of issues impacting motorcycling and motorcyclists in the Canberra region. Issues like inappropriate barrier choices by Roads ACT, road maintenance practices that disadvantage powered two wheeled vehicles and a raft of other critical areas.
One of the outcomes of the meeting was an offer to take Mr Coe (Alistair) and Mr Hanson (Jeremy) for a ride around the ACT demonstrating the problems faced by riders. Thus after many months of diary alignment problems only Alistair was in a position to take up the opportunity.
So the scene has been set and Alistair turned up at the Legislative Assembly (LA) at 0930 on the 30th of October 2011 for the ride.
The Ride
As with all well laid plans for a bike ride the weather turned to “custard”; it was wet, cold and absolutely miserable when Jen and I arrived at the Legislative Assembly to pick up Alistair. We got there around 10 past 9 so we had a chance to do the final plans for the route and discuss whether we should press ahead. So when Alistair arrived we offered him the choice “Wimp Out J” or come for a ride. Well to Alistair’s credit without a pause he said “I’m here for the ride”, now in my opinion that takes guts, as you have Canberra roads that are not the best, Canberra drivers on wet day are the worst, couple that with an old guy with a grey beard going to put you on the back of his bike and ride you around to some of the hot spots impacting motorcyclists around the ACT. I think having Jen there made him less wary, the calming effect of a mature womanJ.
So while Alistair geared up we discussed the route and a few pre-ride instructions that way he gets back safely and I don’t have to pay any dry-cleaning bills.
The route we took was out of the LA, around London Circuit, up Northborne Ave where the cracks in the road and proud bitumen joining strip on the new sections adversely impacted vehicle control, to the Barton Highway, left up the Barton Highway and left onto the Gungahlin Drive Extension (GDE) where we stopped to discuss a number of points: Firstly the barrier system chosen Wire Rope Barriers (WRB), the lack of escape routes if forced off the road given these barriers flank the road in most places; Secondly the W-Beam or Armco that in one place had the C-Section facing in the wrong direction and the threat posed by the space below the beam; thirdly we looked at the speed limit given both lanes were open no workers were present nor work was being done, and yet the posted limit was still 60kph on a double fly buy weekend and there was heavy police enforcement on Friday
Being well behaved Jen and I maintained the posted limit as long as we could before the traffic flow made that hazardous so we up the speed to stay with the traffic.
From the GDE we headed down to Lady Denman Drive to show the problems we face with the positioning of cyclist’s convenience handles (near the Scrivener Dam) and the way the road surface is polishing up making it hazardous in wet conditions. We also noted the grooves in the road where the “Spray and Pray” resurfacing technique just plasters over cracks often exacerbating road deformities.
From Lady Denman drive we turned right onto the Cotter road then left onto McCulloch St into Curtin. This gave us the opportunity to demonstrate the ill-advised placement of some of the road signs, in this case a chevron sign that encroaches into the lane at the second Morgan Cr roundabout, it also highlighted the road deformities cause by large vehicle making the surface hazardous for two wheeled vehicles. We then turn left on Carruthers St before taking a right hand turn onto Yarra Glen, again we could demonstrate the large area of surface missing and the inappropriate placement of a cyclist’s convenience handle on the down ramp.
We headed toward Woden and took the large roundabout up onto Melrose Drive, which gave us the opportunity to highlight the shoddy work done by Roads ACT in grinding away a large channel in the road while implementing a Black Spot treatment jointly designed by the Australian College of Road Safety (ACT) and the MRA ACT. A defect that took strong action by the MRA ACT and the riders of the ACT to get rectified (only somewhat though – I’m still not 100% satisfied with the outcome).
Turning left down Launceston St off Melrose Drive, we had the opportunity to highlight the extremely hazardous road surface treatment in the area from the Irving Street junction down to the Callam Street junction on Launceston Street. The road surface is hazardous to all but 4 wheeled vehicles, even pedestrians twist their ankles on the degraded surface.
We exited Launceston Street, turning right onto Yarra Glenn, passed the hospital then left onto another horror stretch Hindmarsh Drive. Hindmarsh Drive has some of the worse surface deformities of all the “tracks” in the ACT. Motorcycles are deviated from their course by grooves, ruts and slick surfaces when they head up and over Mt Mugga Mugga (for those that didn’t knowJ) with even more degraded surface as you head down the other side. This area is a black spot more so from the lack of street lights than anything else and the site of the first point to point revenue raisers. Funnily enough the MRA ACT has questioned why that section of road is zoned at 80kph because if it was maintained appropriately, with adequate street lights it would be safe to traverse at 100kph. We were advised there has been consideration of raising the limit (but then they wouldn’t get enough revenue to pay for the new cameras).
We turned off Hindmarsh, left along Jerrabomberra Ave onto Sturt Ave, identifying the failing surface and low adhesion points caused by lack of or inappropriate road treatments. Traversing the large roundabout at Kingston we headed along Wentworth Ave, where we identified a man-hole cover on the exit of the roundabout that will deflect the wheels of a motorcycle and potentially cause a crash. Wentworth Ave a great stretch of degraded pavement displaying a total lack of maintenance. I’ve heard of greening the ACT but I don’t believe this should be achieved by growing grass through the cracks in the road as it happening in many stretches of Wentworth Ave as well as other roads around the ACT (e.g. Gundaroo Drive Palmerston).
We then got onto Bowen Drive and extension of Wentworth Ave exiting the province of the ACT Govt. and into the NCA’s neck of the woods as we passed under Kings Ave. This corner would be deemed a traffic hazard and condemned in most civilized communities but in the ACT we have to put up with it. During the day its survivable, even the wet is only somewhat nervy, but at night and in the wet that section of road from the Kings Ave overpass up to the roundabout onto King Edwards Terrace is bordering on lethal. Apart from the lumps and bumps and road width changes King Edwards Terrace didn’t highlight any major defects. We looped around from King Edwards Terrace via Flynn Drive and up onto Commonwealth Ave where we had “fun” negotiating the traffic from Floriade. We then exited left down the London Cct loop on-ramp identifying another manhole cover in the middle of the lane as you exit onto London Cct proper. From there it was a quick flit back to the LA and the end of the actual ride.
Coffee and a Chat
After getting out of all his riding gear Alistair, Jen and I headed over to Tosellini’s for a well-earned coffee and a chat about the ride. Jen pointed out that riding is about risk management and road craft something that is not instilled into other road using members of the community and the need for broader education in these skills. We discussed the need to have motorcycles and motorcycling as an entity in any transport strategy rather than just lumped in as “half a car” as this will underpin how Road authorities choose their maintenance techniques and types and style of barriers they deploy among many other facets of a holistic road treatment strategy. Alistair raised the issue that powered road users were being discriminated against by current government policy as the existing public transport infrastructure is borderline pathetic if you have to traverse Canberra to go to work or work in one of the less serviced regions. We also covered that poor communications employed by the authorities in getting updates and information on Road rules out to road users, and the need for a level of competency depended on the amount of road use a vehicle operator has. Even basic road rule knowledge should be instilled with appropriate testing at all levels and ages as this forms part of basic survival training.
After about an hour and half chatting and discussing many issues Jen and I believe we have gotten the message across and hopefully there will be a better focus on transport issues in the ACT where motorcycling is treated as a positive contributor to the environment and any transport strategy in its own right.
Peter Major
1st October 2011
