The Bridge Rd pop-up cycleway at the intersection of Bridge Rd and Ross St (Photo: Glebe Society)

By the Convenor, Duncan Leys, from Bulletin 8 of 2023 (October)

The Bridge Road Cycleway

This matter has been going on for three years, it first appeared in the Bulletin in 2020. It has generated conflict between the residents impacted by restrictions imposed by the cycleway and proponents of cycling. The cycleway was always going to arouse complaints, however a better result was possible in our view.

The Society’s view is that the cycleway is unsafe in that pedestrians and cyclists, cyclists and motorists are not separated over the full length of the cycleway. Correspondence released in a recent FOI document showed the City of Sydney Council shared some of those concerns and recognised ‘a need to improve the design and condition of the cycleway in order to address significant safety issues with the current arrangements.’

The Society felt that insufficient thought was given to residents whose parking and access arrangements were largely ignored.  There were other shared route options that might have given a fairer and safer outcome which, in our view, did not receive proper consideration. 

Manoeuvering around a garbage truck on Bridge Rd (Photo: 2GB)

The discussion about transforming the temporary cycleway to a permanent cycleway was rushed. In a meeting with Transport for NSW in November 2022 we were told the cycleway was to go ahead largely in the same form as the temporary cycleway. In March 2023 Transport for NSW called for tenders for work on the permanent cycleway after completion of the power upgrade works for the new Sydney Fish Market. The tenders closed on 20 April 2023, and it was expected work would commence in mid-2023. We now understand that following the power upgrade, further trenching and remediation work is needed along the length of the cycleway route, including repaving the road surface to ensure the road is in a condition suitable for a cycleway.

From the information released in the recent FOI documents, funding of the work does not appear to have been locked in.  Julie Sundqvist of Transport for NSW states: ‘So while ideally we would like to start in April, I don’t think we can commit to that until the proposal is formalised and funding is sorted’.  Transport for NSW has scrapped the tender and will commence a new tender process in late 2023, and expects to start work early in 2024.   But is the funding sorted and is it sufficient?

The State Budget handed down on 19 September does not list the Bridge Road Cycleway as a project for funding. Two were listed, Sutherland to Cronulla Active transport, and Sydney Harbour Bridge Northern Cycle Ramp. There is an amount of $18,659,000 in the budget for a program to ‘improve local connection and support active transport’. Perhaps the Bridge Road Cycleway is included in this program; however, we do not believe that amount is sufficient for all three cycleways, and some believe it is insufficient for Bridge Road by itself.

Overlaying all the aforesaid is the work done by my colleague Asa Wahlquist on the extra traffic to be generated by the new SFM and I quote from Asa’s report verbatim.

Traffic is already congested on Bridge Road near the new Sydney Fish Market site – imagine what it will be like when it opens. (photo: Glebe Society)

The Glebe Society is also concerned about future traffic problems when the new Fish Market is up and running. Every day hundreds of trucks and vans, buses and thousands of private vehicles will visit the Fish Market. When the Transport for NSW meeting was questioned, an official admitted trucks would be queuing along Bridge Rd in the morning. How many trucks and vehicles would be queuing? How long would the queue be? How long would the vehicles in the queue wait before entering the SFM? Would vehicles be queuing in both directions? How disruptive would it be? These are all unanswered questions. Vehicles accessing the Market will include semi-trailers and large trucks delivering fish – despite the SFM’s claim to authenticity, over 90 percent of the fish sold in the market are not locally caught but arrive by heavy vehicle – as well as the vans of retailers who purchase the wholesale fish for their shops. There will be other vans delivering goods for the restaurants in the new building, cars of workers and visitors, and buses and taxis. All these vehicles – except for the buses and taxis – will cross the footpath along Bridge Rd that, under current plans, will be shared by pedestrians and cyclists. (Asa’s full report is here)

And many of these extra vehicle movements will be coming in and going out on Bridge Road. Realistically, Bridge Road is going to get much busier than it is now.

According to the most recent advice from Transport for NSW, ‘The project team are currently preparing a Community Update which will be sent at the earliest possible opportunity’. The Community Update is long overdue, and it needs to give a realistic assessment of what Bridge Road is going to look like when the Cycleway is permanent and the new SFM is in operation.