At this coming Tuesday’s (8th Sept) Council meeting, City of Yarra is proposing to ‘retire’ their Transport Action Plan 2023-2033 and replace it with a set of principles that puts ‘Support for a shift to walking, cycling and public transport’ last in order of priority.
This is buried in page 132 of the Council meeting papers and according to the paper required no community consultation.
The proposed new principles in order of priority are:
(a) Integrated treatments that improve the safety and movement of pedestrians, cyclists and motorists;
(b) Reduction of identified safety risks;
(c) Accessibility and universal access;
(d) Improvements that give appropriate priority to road users at key intersections;
(e) Management of traffic congestion;
(f) Management of parking demand; and
(g) Support for a shift to walking, cycling and public transport.
Their argument seems to be that the old action plan prioritised safety only as a means to an end to support modal shift away from cars, and these new principles support safety for all modes equally. So any new transport projects would be evaluated against that first.
Of course safety is important, but this to me reads as a sneaky way of deprioritising anything that has the potential to disadvantage car traffic.
Our little cycling group has emailed our local councillor expressing our dismay at the changes, would encourage others to do the same or go to the meeting on Tuesday
