Brisbane City Council’s planning scheme has come under scrutiny after Council’s Opposition Leader made a simple question of a new inner-city development.
The new, approved development underway at 309 North Quay was presented to Council’s City Planning and Suburban Renewal Committee on Tuesday morning.
Despite the development having “ample bicycle parking”, Opposition Leader Jared Cassidy asked how cyclists are actually able to access the Bicentennial Bikeway from the development, which sits on the corner of North Quay and Saul Street, just before the William Jolly Bridge.
Council claimed active travel commuters could access the Bicentennial Bikeway from the Cribb St Tunnel in Milton or from Makerston Street in the CBD.
Active travel advocacy group Space4CyclingBNE claimed both options had major accessibility issues with multiple lanes of traffic isolating the development from the Bicentennial Bikeway.
They described the ramp from Makerston Street as “steep, narrow, and requires riders to dismount” whereas access from the Cribb Street Tunnel is “in another postcode”.
“We checked out the site after the presentation, and confirmed it’s not nearly as well connected as the impression an unwary visitor might get from a map. It feels like an island surrounded by busy, multi-lane, high-speed roads without any signalised crossings,” the group wrote on Facebook.
“For anyone with a walker, wheelchair, or impaired vision the site seems almost completely unreachable.”
The Bicentennial Bikeway is an off-road, 4.8 km pathway that runs along the Brisbane River from Toowong to the Brisbane CBD.
As of 2020, the bikeway carried 1.9 million active travel commuters.
