VIC:Bid to boost cycling in Victoria fails

AAP General News (Australia)
08-17-2011
VIC:Bid to boost cycling in Victoria fails

MELBOURNE, Aug 17 AAP - A plan to make cycling a major form of transport in Victoria
has failed, the auditor-general says.

The aim of the 2009 Victorian cycling strategy, introduced by the then Labor government,
was to grow bike riding into a leading form of transport.

Auditor-General Des Pearson said the strategy was hastily developed without a proper
understanding of current cycling trends or what was required to make it mainstream.

"Serious limitations in (the strategy's) ... development and implementation compromised
its potential to achieve its goal," he said in a report tabled to state parliament on
Wednesday.

Dr Pearson said there was too much emphasis on physical infrastructure and more time
should have been spent reducing incentives to drive and promoting cycling.

Despite recent growth, bicycles are used for just 1.6 per cent, or 184,000, of the
11.6 million trips made on a typical weekday in Victoria, according to 2007-08 figures.

Cycling accounts for between 10 and 27 per cent of all trips in Germany, Denmark and
the Netherlands.

Dr Pearson said cycling had grown in those countries due to extensive infrastructure
and promotion and measures to make driving more expensive and less convenient.

He noted cycling trips in inner Melbourne and the central business district have grown
by about 50 per cent during the last four years.

Dr Pearson said higher petrol prices and overcrowding on public transport had contributed
to cycling levels.

Bicycle Victoria spokesman Garry Brennan said the report showed the government needed
to do more to encourage cycling.

"While we have made haphazard progress so far, if cycling is to become truly mainstream
then much more concentrated effort has to be made by the government," he said.

AAP mj/gfr/dep

KEYWORD: CYCLING

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