Bridge Road cross-section (approximately mid-block) illustrating car, bus, pedestrian and cycling zones. (Source: New Sydney Fish Market overview, October 2019 p21).

By Asa Wahlquist, New Sydney Fish Market Community Consultative Committee, Glebe Society representative, from Bulletin 6/2025 (August)

The new shared footpath along Bridge Road in front of the new Sydney Fish Market will be an accident waiting to happen.

The footpath will be shared by pedestrians and cyclists, making it part of the intermittent Bridge Road Cycleway. With visitor numbers forecast to double, but the same number of car parking spaces beneath the new Fish Market as there are in the current market, most visitors will arrive by foot from public transport: buses, taxis, drop off and other car rides. All will have to cross the footpath to access the Fish Market, and all will have to dodge the cyclists who are legally using the path. If e-scooters are approved, they will present a further hazard.

Consider the following scenario: an international visitor, having enjoyed a good lunch, perhaps with a couple of drinks, exits the Fish Market, looks the wrong way for our traffic, and steps onto the footpath into the path of a bicycle. This is an inevitability: pedestrians and bikes do not mix, as anyone who has walked around the Glebe foreshore can attest. The shared path in front of the Fish Market will have a significantly larger volume of pedestrians and bikes, with an exponentially larger risk of accidents.

The Glebe Society has objected to the shared path from the start and has frequently raised the issue at the New Sydney Fish Market Community Consultative Committee (CCC). The problem is that the responsible body, Transport for NSW (TfNSW), has refused repeated requests to meet with the CCC to discuss the shared path, along with the inevitable major traffic problems on Bridge Road once the Fish Market opens.

Bridge Road cross-section (approximately mid-block) illustrating car, bus, pedestrian and cycling zones.  (Source: New Sydney Fish Market overview, October 2019 p21).

City of Sydney (CoS) councillor, Jess Miller, is a member of the CCC. At the 23 June Council meeting, Cr Miller moved a motion, which was passed unanimously, criticising TfNSW for failing to provide answers to a range of traffic concerns raised by the CCC and ‘the failure of the shared path design on Bridge Road to adequately manage pedestrian safety’, along with a list of other issues relevant to the Fish Market and to Glebe. (Full details of the decision: Transport Planning to Support High Density in the Bays Precinct, 23/06/2025)

Cr Miller said representatives of the City of Sydney Council will meet with representatives of TfNSW, Infrastructure NSW (which is responsible for the Fish Market while it is under construction), and Placemaking NSW (which will be responsible for the site once it is open) on 11 August 2025 to discuss traffic issues.

Cr Miller said: ‘Wherever possible, the CoS prefers separated cycleways and we will continue to advocate for this as the best option for the Fish Markets’.

The Glebe Society has long advocated for safer conditions along the neighbouring foreshore shared path. Our suggestions, all rebuffed by CoS, include a chicane to slow bikes down at the end of Glebe Point Road where bikes enter the park, an electronic sign telling bikes how fast they are going, better signage and some form of enforcement of the speed limit.

Signs along the path suggest a maximum cyclist speed of 10 km/hour, which is roughly the speed of a jogger. This is, however, unenforceable due to the status of the path. 

There are no figures for pedestrians injured by bikes along the foreshore path. The problem is the lack of cyclist identification. If an injured pedestrian complains to the police, unless they can identify the cyclist, there are no consequences for the cyclist and no record of the accident.

The shared path on Bridge Road will be partly on TfNSW territory, but it will also fall within the responsibility of Placemaking NSW because it deviates from the original road onto Fish Market property. 

The questions that must be answered include: will there be a speed limit for bicycles; will that speed limit be enforced, indeed can it be enforced on Placemaking NSW property or will it fall into the same black hole as the foreshore walk; what redress will there be for injured pedestrians; and which body will be responsible when the inevitable accidents do happen?