This morning’s commute took me past two examples of terrible resurfacing; one on the bike path and one on the road. The first is on the bit of bike path that runs from Cook/Aranda to LBG, running parallel with both Bindubi Street and William Hovell Drive. That path is one of the best things about my day. Magnificent. I’m incredibly thankful for the bikefrastructure in our lovely town. Anyway, the old surface was okay. A couple of bits of grass growing here and there, but perfectly serviceable.
Then, about a week ago, the dreaded squiggly lines appeared. Remember how they used to do that on the road until everyone complained because it’s unsafe and stoopid? Riding along the path then became a bit like driving really fast over the white lines they’ve got in front of the big roundabout on the Barton Highway…doogadoogadoogadooga. Being slowed down when you’re using your own energy to propel yourself is also particularly annoying.
At least there was an element of comedy to the whole affair: the dudes doing the work were so thorough they even put the tar over all the grass growing in the cracks. Amazing! Perhaps because it’s just a bike path they didn’t need to go the extra mile and think about killing the grass a couple weeks before and then smoothing things over prior to unleashing their squigglidom on the unsuspecting path users. It looked ridiculous, too.
Then, a couple of days ago, the good folks returned and resealed the path. As you can see in the photo, the whole affair has assumed farcical proportions. It’s also s*** to ride on. I’m convinced that this would never be allowed to happen on a quiet suburban road. Don’t get me wrong: I’m very thankful for the money being spent on fixing it. Just a tiny bit more effort (or some modicum of thought) would have made the path surface great, rather than worse than it was before.
The second debacle does concern a road, but not the bit that cars drive on, to wit the recently resurfaced bit of Melrose Drive between Launceston Street and Hindmarsh Drive. As noted in a recent RA post, the new wisdom is to just bung some road surface pebbles down and let the cars act as steamrollers over the next week or three. Of course, this doesn’t work with bikes, owing to the fact that they don’t weigh as much and have narrow tyres. Which means that the bike lane is now really unsafe, especially for road bikes. This effort also looks ridiculous, although the bluebells growing up through the road surface do look lovely.
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