Government to duplicate 4.5 kilometres of William Hovell Drive

Briar Caldwell will take ages but long term will be awesome.

Much more logical to make a cycle path near to it, return the road to a 100 zone as it once was and ban any vehicle not capable of doing at least 70 from using the road between 7AM and 7PM.

James Forge the ACT government ban something for safety reasons and common sense? Surely you jest.

The cycling lobby is just a little too strong in the ACT and want to put their members at risk by demanding their right to cycle ON a road instead of using the viable and safer alternative WHERE available.

James Forge yep. Welcome to Canberra, where you too can have your daily life dictated by 1.5% of the population

Great idea……..Let’s mix pedestrians with traffic or 60kph cyclists downhill. 🤦‍♂️

I’d rather see the money spent on improving the cycle way between Weston and Casurina Sands……er……I mean Cotter Road.

Steve Quasi Hoppitt Why? It’s great to drive down that road on the wrong side dodging oncoming traffic.

James Forge barreling straight into a large group of cyclists could be fun, but unfortunately it would scratch the paint on my car.

Jane, it comes down to the speeds used on both paths.

A cycle group, be it 10 or 40 strong, would not be advised on a shared path including walkers, slower riders and animals.

I understand the want to separate bikes and cars, but to not allow bikes on on-road paths would cause more to drive and add to congestion currently (be it Canberra congestion for 15 minutes of a morning)

Matthew Beale I think you misunderstood me. I don’t think pedestrians should share with cyclists.

Cars, bikes and pedestrians should all have their own space, and I don’t understand why separated, designated cycle paths are not included when roads are redesigned.

I will not ride a bike on the road due to safety considerations, and placing pedestrians in the path of speeding cyclists is also potentially fraught with danger.

Why not just give everyone their own space?

Jane Delaney if the cycle lane is not on the road they won’t use it 🙂

Jane Delaney this is a high speed downhill section of road. There is already a cycle lane that allows for cycles speeds of 60kph. You do not want pedestrians mixing with cyclists at that speed. There is also currently no pedestrian access from the Kama nature reserve/Molongolo River.

A shared path and an on road cycle lane in absolutely needed.

Steve Quasi Hoppitt would you drive on a 60kph road if you knew there would be pedestrians at any moment. You are complaining about a problem that doesn’t exist. Cyclists already ride the cycle lane on William Hovel straight past the traffic every day

Ryan

2 comments.

1) Speed difference may be more or less between bike and car or walker. Bikes do anywhere between 10-70km/h.

2) The on road has their own lane for a cyclist vs. Shared path is the same lane.

Sam Nö oooh yay! I’m sure it will take a while but once it’s done it will be awesome!

It’ll make it so much easier than following people doing 20 under because they’re scared of a hill

Jack Hearps that road was designed that way to slow the traffic. 😂

Nic Danaher .. by promoting headons and two major intersections.

Lyndon Zoukowski actually road works are exactly infrastructure

Lyndon Zoukowski what do you think infrastructure means without looking it up?

Andrew Dudley well I tell you what my Rates $$ say. $50 more per f/n in 2 years. 🤔🤭

Marc Edwards Great waste of $$

Lyndon of course it’s needed, and your rates were going up regardless, the people of molonglo also need to be able to exit their suburbs along with the future strathnairn suburbs of west belco.

Adam Hughes see point

Rather than getting personal about it. The upgrade taken on its own looks great, but every time a major change is made, it has a knock on effect across other parts of the road network.
By getting traffic out of Belconnen quicker, it will arrive at the other choke points quicker. You’ve got major merge points at Coulter Drive, Glenloch Interchange and just past the Acton Tunnel before reaching a major traffic conflict at the Corranderk St roundabout.
So, to answer your question, I do know a bit about the road and clearly a better understanding of the network wide implications for a 5km duplication than you appear to.

No, this is a vote buying gimmick which will add to peak congestion on Parkes Way, especially at the Civic roundabouts. Until they’re dealt with, any outer upgrades are wasted.

Waste of money. Nothing infrastructure about this

Tim Cole agree with the need for Parkes Way to be upgraded too. Time to loose the roundabouts and make it a true expressway, priority for east west traffic

The Parkes Way roundabout removals will cost in the order of $200-300 million.

Tim Cole how will this add to congestion and do you use William hovel drive on a daily basis?

By increasing the traffic flow along William Hovell, it has the knock on effect of increasing congestion at the far end.
It will provide some relief to William Hovell itself but the overall improvement will be negligible.

Tim Cole that doesn’t help me understand how it will create congestion at either end. It’s fine as it is especially with the lights put in and extra lane along that middle bit for a short stretch of road.
Adding the extra lane will be great for getting stuck behind a slow truck or bus at the belco end heading south, it’s currently one lane that way until you hit the lights and it’s two lanes going north the whole way already and it’s only a bit backed up for me if i finish work when school ends. I genuinely don’t understand how it generates extra traffic anywhere as a result.

Andrew Dudley Tim was referring to how traffic traveling dataset gets to the bext congestion point further down the line. In this case being Parkes way. This happens every single time you improve a bottleneck via widening.

As for increased traffic volume, it can also result in that because when it’s faster it gets more traffic…. Even if it only gets you to the next bottleneck faster.

There are actually a number of videos on YouTube explaining how people change behaviour when a traffic improvement is made and how sometimes the better thing tondo is to slow traffic down in some places to get better overall throughput.

Tamzen Armer agreed. Civic to Belconnen and Kippax must be started before any more major upgrades take place.

Ted Douglas Well the Liberals like to play politics on these things. Otherwise, the Belconnen to airport route would have been next to be built, but if they did that (because thats the next busiest route that needs light rail), the LNP would have a field day about Tuggeranong and the southside missing out again.

Ted Douglas I live in Tuggeranong and to be honest, we shouldn’t be getting lightrail that far south as there is not the population density and it would take far too long to be viable. It needs to be built in the inner suburbs. Tuggeranong would be better served by Bus Rapid Transit for now, but no one seems to be talking common sense and its all political point scoring.