The Adelaide Cyclists - BISA Podcast

Podcast #1 February 2010 Adelaide Cyclists - Bicycle Institute of SA

Transcript:

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Angus: Hello and welcome to this the first broadcast from Adelaide Cyclist and the Bicycle Institute of South Australia, we're really excited to be able to bring it to you finally. I'm Angus Kingston, the creator of Adelaide Cyclist.com.

We hope to produce these on a regular basis, so make sure you subscribe to the feed. In coming weeks, some programs with cyclists, cycling writers, we're going to dabble into some Adelaide cycling history and some features about better riding and gear.

But in this program, our conversation with the Minister for Transport in South Australia, Patrick Conlon. Jeremy Miller, who's the current chair of the Bicycle Institute of South Australia, in his office at the height of the Tour Down Under to talk about the government's strategy for cycling in 2010 and into the future.

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Jeremy Miller: We're here today with the Minister for Transport for South Australia, the Honorable Patrick Conlon, we'd like to thank him for his time today and we've got a few questions we'd like to ask him about his views on cycling in South Australia.

And you probably are aware that the Minister is actually a keen cyclist and he's spoken quite a bit on it recently and he's talked at the BISA general meeting last time about his love of cycling, and his discovery of cycling.

So I understand that quite a few people cycle to Roma Mitchell House, we're keen to know whether you've got your own parking bay downstairs in the bike lock up.

Minister.

Patrick Conlon: No, unfortunately it's one of the things I can't do on a bike, for a number of reasons. One is that almost invariably I have lots and lots of paperwork to take to and fro, but it's also, if I were on the bike, I think it's barely four kilometers from where I live to the office so I'd be warming up, I wouldn't be warmed up before I was getting off so.

Jeremy: You might need to do what a friend of mine does; he does a loop up Mount Lofty on the way home from our work.

Minister: The thing is, a lot of people have a really set routine about going to and from work because I might be at a breakfast, or giving a speech or not here or somewhere else, so it's very hard to establish a routine.

What I do instead, as you can see, I've got a crappy old gym bike in the corner so when I grab, when I get an hour or two of work, I'll get on the gym bike and throw everyone out and get a bit of exercise.

Jeremy: Stare out at the view.

Minister: Yeah.

Jeremy: Yeah.

Minister: Well, I take my glasses off, so I know there's a view out there somewhere.

Jeremy: [laughter]

Minister: But I'm not sure what it looks like any more.

Jeremy: And you ride a fair amount? How many kilometers do you recommend you're putting on?

Minister: I try to get out a few mornings and ideally, both days on the weekend and tend to ride around, only around the sixty mark but try to get the hills in on the weekend, and try to use the crevice track a lot.

I really like that during the week mornings, because you know I get out of my place and be at the toll guide by six o'clock and you're back on in your chair by seven thirty and all of that and you're, you're...

Jeremy: Fresh start.

Minister: Ready for the day.

Jeremy: Ready for the day. So I guess from a road cycling perspective as far as riding a bike with a bunch of other people it's a bit different I guess to, from the perspective that a lot of everyday cyclists have they take a different view to on road infrastructure and the way that infrastructure can work for them.

One of the criticisms that I hear, in my role as the Chairperson of the Bicycle Institute is that often that infrastructure doesn't link up.

Minister: Yeah.

Jeremy: Now I know that the government's been working fairly hard on establishing where the deficits in the cycling network are, I just wanted to hear where you think that's going in as far as establishing more of a cohesive cycling network?

Minister: You start with what the problem is. The problem is there are two levels of government, but more importantly, we come from a culture of roads being built for cars for decades and decades, in essence you're trying to retrofit a car network to suit cyclists.

And that's not easy, because you know there's a lot of sunken investment in infrastructure so, I mean we've managed to increase, by a great deal, the number of tracks around town, and of course we've got a couple of new specialist tracks opening.

But it's very, very hard to turn what has been a hundred years of investment in roads for cars into something that is convenient for cars and for cyclists.

But you know, we do the best we can, but that investments has accelerated in recent times and we've been very successful with the Commonwealth recently in terms of getting a big share of their contribution to, both to us and on the behalf of councils, we're always strongly for the councils. That's hard.

But, I mean, what the issue does too, people who don't think about cycling much, think about cyclists as a group and they're very different.

Jeremy: Yes.

Minister: They're a very different group of people, there are people who have one interest, there are people who like their cycles as a convenient way of getting to and from work and that's about the start and end of their focus, and there are others who like their cycles to get out and climb up hills and things.

But, so, but it's been good to get a bit of perspective on that. I think we, what we're doing from here, we talked about this before, is getting the Office of Cycling and Walking into the mainstream of the Department.

Jeremy: Yes, yes.

Minister: ... of Adelaide Safety, so we don't make the same mistakes in the future that we've made in the past.

Jeremy: Any plans to expand the Office of Cycling and Walking and its role?

Minister: Not at the moment. I'm actually not a great fan of bigger departments. One of the most successful departments we've had in government is the Office of Infrastructure and I don't think it's ever had more than sixteen, seventeen people in it. I mean the issue isn't how big the unit is but the influence it has.

And I've been meeting with the guys just to see how the new arrangements are going, but you can see that there is, you know the emerging trend is an eighteen million dollar bike way on the northern expressway.

Now that's also some funding from the Commonwealth. Bikes will be included in the planning of the super way in the North-South corridor and you've seen stuff at works.

Jeremy: OK, that's good to hear.

Minister: You know, so the real issue is the influence, not the size and I'll be following up to make sure the guys are getting listened to.

Jeremy: I like what we hear about the infrastructure and certainly from Adelaide planning and the transit orientated developments that are planned, and the re-development of our rather antiquated, as we've discussed previously, the diesel run network and we're looking at electrifying the system.

I guess from a perspective of cycling and social equity as well, we see a great opportunity to develop the green links that were originally lines drawn on a map in the safety in numbers strategy, which for those of you who don't know, out there in listen land, the safety in numbers strategy was a cycling strategy for South Australia, dealing with 2010 and beyond.

We're in 2010 now, and obviously we see some of the strategies in the safety in numbers haven't quite been met yet and others have, which is good, and there should be congratulations on that. The safety numbers and strategy I guess were setting some benchmarks.

One of those was the green links, which are the continuous cycling networks that are parallel to the rail lines, with the re-development of the, electrification and certainly re-development of the stations, along those node points-

What do we see as far as perhaps incorporating the development of the green links with the re-development of the rail lines and certainly with the re-development of the stations, so not only do you have fast continuous cycling links, but you have bicycle lock up facilities, perhaps also integrated with a new ticketing system.

Minister: There's all of that. You can see where we're going already with the overpass for the new tram on south road has.

Jeremy: A nice bit of infrastructure. I've been watching it go up. Yeah, yeah.

Minister: Four million, there's about four million bucks extra on that so the box can go over the top without having to stop and that's coupled with some, we've assisted Marion Council in fixing up, there's a stretch towards the sea from there towards Moffettville.

Jeremy: But Tramway Park is almost finished; I guess that was the first cab off the rank.

Minister: Possibly the Tramway's been the first to be substantially upgraded but we think the opportunity is bigger than green way on the network.

If we're successful and we're doing everything we can to build, including bringing the private sector into this, we'll get transport oriented developments where cycling will be something, will be very attractive to people who live in high quality, high density living around high quality rail corridors.

Because it'll be an opportunity to incorporate, traveling by public transport and shorter traveling by cycle, so all of those things, need to be integrated in planning.

And I think we've actually, going away from the safety in numbers strategy, very good strategy you're seeing something like fifty five percent increase in the period of that, but the next thing, I think is a paradigm shift towards changing the way people think about how they get around in general.

So there will be the greenway strategy, but I think what we're looking at is a bigger, broader strategy of about how we live in Adelaide into the future and I think cycling will have a bigger role than it's ever had before.

And come back to something we've talked about before, about the different needs of cyclists. I think there's one thing in common with cyclists, they'd like a change, I think in the culture, about the use of roads.

And I think, we've lived in a culture where the car is king and not all, but a few motorists believe that cyclists are an unnecessary inconvenience on something that's built for cars, well.

Jeremy: Changing that idea is.

Minister: I think that's the change in culture, make no mistake though, that's a big cultural thing and I think the move to high density living with more people focused on cycling, the more cyclists there are the more conscious people will be of them.

But if you go to big cities in Germany and you see that cyclists are considered to be a very, very important part of transport in those cities,

Jeremy: Everyone rides, yeah.

Minister: And so you know, I think that's the next big step is to use, to build leverage off the $2.6 billion going into public transport to get the private sector involved in the developments to make sure that we actually have a city that encourages a different way of thinking about how you get around.

Jeremy: Yeah. I think from my experience certainly, cycling changes the way that you actually think about the urban environment. When you're behind the wheel of a car, and when you drive everywhere, you see that it is a destination and an arrival point. It is that A to B. I use my car to get from A to B. We even use that same sort of language.

But when you ride a bike every day or when you ride a bike predominantly for transport, you start to see the world a bit differently. And it's quite true. It is about changing the way we think about not only road use but it will change the way people think about their cities.

And if we are starting to look at Adelaide - which I can look out through the window and see this beautiful expanse of green because we are in the tree tops right now, we are above the tree tops - we think about what is that city going to be in the next 20 or 30 years. And certainly densifying along the nodes is one aspect of it.

I guess the reason I asked the previous question about the rail system is that, and social equity, is that that it was really brought home to me catching a train back from Gola -

And coming down through the northern suburbs of Adelaide, thinking, if we just had a cycle network or cycle way along this railway line, we wouldn't have all these people jumping on and off the trains to literally get between stations.

And a lot of them were jumping on and off the train with bicycles. There was only one carriage on and it was full. It was a real eye opener for me, as well.

Minister: Set aside the issue about bikes and trains because it's a really difficult one when you have got a lot of people catching trains.

But in terms of public transport and having good corridors and having the right sort of culture, the thing that we have seen emerge in cities that have been successful about transport oriented development around good public transport. They start out in the process with how many people get out of cars and into public transport.

But they move to a place where it is about the trip not taken. Because you have got higher density, you have got more things around the node; it is about not taking the trip at all. That is when the bike comes in because, like the trip is a much shorter one. You might only be going a short distance.

Cycling is an extremely attractive thing because you are not frightened when you're doing it. Cycling is a major impediment to a lot of people who are a little bit scared to get out and bike on the road. So when that culture changes I think you will really see exhilaration.

But, I have said this before; it is a paradigm shift we're in. The cost of fuel, the cost of carbon, where we are heading...

Jeremy: The cost of delivery services to expanding suburbs.

Minister: Yeah. It's all there.

Jeremy: Yeah.

Minister: So we are in a paradigm shift and the sooner we get to the next stage the better. We are taking this very seriously. I think a 30-year plan to bring people within the urban growth boundary, the investment, probably is going to be one of the most important things as a government we do in this state.

It will change the shape of the way we live. And if you do it with quality it will be about the best place on earth to live. I think it is all pretty good.

Jeremy: I love Adelaide. It's a great place. I think Adelaide could indeed be the cycling capital of the southern hemisphere. I mean we could really market Adelaide as being an amazing cycling city. There is so much going for it.

We obviously have the exposure of the Tour Down Under. But with all the wine regions and the development of the racing trail and the shrubs [?] trail, we have got and amazing tourism destinations in the Kangaroo Islands and the southeast as well.

And being able to perhaps get on board with tourism, and health promotion as well, and look at promoting and marketing.

I think that is the other thing with cycling is that it doesn't obviously with the transport portfolio and infrastructure you're very much concerned with the transport aspects of cycling, but because it crosses into the health portfolios and definitely into the tourism portfolios, as well.

What sort of comment would you give on that integration of cycling across different aspects of government, as well?

Minister: We see it very clearly with the tour and how that flows into the areas that you might not associate with elite cycling or with sport cycling, as you might call it.

The great example is those councils' players now involved in the tour this year. Of course, [inaudible 13:33] has been involved before that, been working on cycling trails, cycling networks clear as a racing trail.

But the focus on the tour has given those councils' focus on how we connect up those northern networks. Now, they are very much touristy sort of recreational networks. But, obviously, they offer facilities for people who want to travel along there on a bike.

But we have had discussions with the clear council and with [inaudible 13:55] about connecting up their trails together. Some of them are on unused railway lines.

It has been the sports focus that has got them thinking about how they can connect up their infrastructure. So I shouldn't underestimate the influence of this Tour Down Under across all levels of cycling. That really has sparked some enthusiasm. I think Armstrong's approach of including everyone in a ride has been great of getting people on bikes, so...

Jeremy: You mentioned South Road just briefly before, with the over pass over it. I guess that was one of the reasons the cycling over pass was built over South Road, as well, was that cyclists didn't stop what I understand is to be a continuous flow of traffic along South Road.

One might say eventually within that, because of course with infrastructure being built, and certainly from cyclist's point of view we have been really, really keen to see the investment in infrastructure along South Road.

And certainly seeing that integrated with the over and under passes that have been built, that is really pleasing to see.

And certainly the Tramway Park and being able to link up the infrastructure, probably; you can't underestimate how important that is for the cycling community. I guess we were pleased to offer the congratulations when that was built because that was really important.

But I am keen to know whether there is a timetable almost for the redevelopment of South Road. I say that because I work on South Road as well, so I see South Road every day. But I try not to ride along it because I feel like I am taking my life into my own hands.

Minister: Yeah. I don't like riding on South Road. But if there's a road to avoid I reckon South Road because it carries more cars and trucks than any other metropolitan road.

It's the main north/south corridor, and the reason we're building that $800 billion road north is that it is a big freight carrier too. Bikes and [inaudible 15:38] don't get along very well on a narrow piece of road.

So this is something that probably should have been started 30 years ago. It's enormously expensive. The jobs that we are doing there are very expensive. And they are quite disruptive too because you have to keep traffic flowing while you are doing it. So there is a billion dollars committed between us and the commonwealth there.

That just starts the job. They will build new underpasses down towards Stewart Road. They've got Port Road and Gains Road on the agenda. The rail line there. Lots of work. It will be going on when I am retired, I'd say.

But you've got to start it. We were the first people to start it. You never finish something unless you start in, in my experience.

Jeremy: The South Road is one of these discontinuous bits of cycling infrastructure as it is now. Often cyclists feel that when they need the cycling infrastructure it disappears when they need it most: at crossings, where the road narrows, at certain points on South Road, particularly around Edwards Town.

You might be familiar with where the road narrows.

Minister: Yeah. My electorate. Oh, yeah.

Jeremy: But I am curious to know whether, even if it is a simple matter of paint on roads to designate and area as an area for cyclists, would be one of the options that could be considered along there?

Minister: South Road is a great example of a couple of things. One is that need to try and retrofit something that has been designed and it's still not really designed terribly well for increased traffic over the years. The big problem is South Road at the moment struggles with vehicle traffic. It is very hard to retrofit.

The other issue you run into on roads where there is, as you know, South Road predominantly, businesses along there get interfering with available parking at businesses when there is very little off-street.

Every time we have a look at a bicycle path somewhere the first thing that comes up is businesses talking about their parking being taken away at certain times.

So there are a lot of interests you have to reconcile when you do these things and I think until we can get a lot of money into infrastructure on South Road, it is going to be really hard to please everyone.

Jeremy: I wonder... I guess I would just like to pick your opinion. And this is a bit of an outside question. But I think a lot that South Australia and Adelaide in particularly is a major car manufacturing center, as well.

So we do have certainly a car manufacturing culture in Adelaide. We had until recently two major car manufacturing plants. Now we have one. So obviously that's a large part of the economy of the State.

We see the General Motors Holding Plant with all its second and third tier supplies sending their materials to GMH. How is that going to affect the economy of the state, I guess, with...

Minister: If there is one thing you can see in South Australia in the last eight years is a dramatic diversification in the economic strengths. We are doing far more of other things than car manufacturing.

When Mitsubishi closed, if it would have closed 10 years ago, it would have been front page news and an absolute disaster. By the time Mitsubishi went out of business it was that people saw it coming at some point.

Jeremy: They had resigned themselves to the fact that it was happening. Yeah.

Minister: It didn't have the dramatic effect on unemployment that it would have had because there was that capacity to soak up some people. Now many applied to global financial crisis and the federal government and the state government maintain infrastructure. But the main thing is that it kept employment there.

I think what we are seeing in a transition to a much more diverse economy. Which means that motor vehicle manufacturing, while important, simply isn't the be all and end all that it was maybe a decade ago. So that, you know...

Jeremy: I guess it worries me from a social perspective, as well, because there is a lot of interest in that in that end of town and a lot of investment in the economy as well.

Minister: Yeah. Well, there's a proportion of the economy that's less than it was five years ago and less than it was again ten years ago. The clips inside them, we pulled. It's got a ground line running through them, the tramline nearby.

Jeremy: Yes. I'm very familiar with it.

Minister: We've bought the site to make sure that we can control what occurs there and control the planning, hire a tech to build it. We're going to be really high quality, six minutes from the center of the city.

It's going to be pretty lazy, if you want something in the city to help your bike to go in. I'll make this point a little bit about culture. Once you actually get into the culture of not driving, you find it actually a bit unpleasant to do short drives. I do.

Freight tram here, and everyone catches it except me. I prefer to walk over to the market and walk back. You know, it's just a cultural thing.

Jeremy: It's interesting to know the study you went on overseas and the trips to Europe, in particular. Did you end up going to Freiberg?

Minister: Yes. We went to Freiberg in cycles and trams.

Jeremy: Excellent.

Minister: Go to Portland in Oregon. What picks up when you get it right? With public transport, it's cycling and walking, hand in glove.

What can you do for cycling? The most important thing to do is change the way we live and develop here. Because, now, all of those gems, the city, the castle at Freiburg.

And I was not on this tour. But I've been to Munich before. I mean, if you're going to get run over in Munich, it's going to be, more likely going to be by someone on a cycle than someone in a motor car.

Jeremy: There are bicycles everywhere. It's similar when I was in Tokyo, Japan. There were bicycles everywhere. Literally, the cyclists and pedestrians and public transport all just wove together. You can be walking down the street and the cyclists will be wading amongst you, and it all just works because people respect it.

Minister: There seems to be a big wave in the States now of single-veered bikes and town bikes for the place. And it's very affectionable. If you haven't got one, you know one. You know what I mean?

Jeremy: Yes. There's a developing subculture here in Adelaide as well.

Minister: You see all the people coming.

Jeremy: The reason I'm interested in Freiburg is that one of the towns near there that I was aware of was developed on an industrial site or an old industrial site. The site had a train line running through it, so you can develop one near the side of it.

I was wondering if something similar had been considered for Tensely [?] . I mentioned the towns near the site.

Minister: Well, we've looked at Tensely closely, along with the... We've done a study with the Commonwealth. We spent about four million dollars. We can get things there. There are a whole lot of people that deliver off the Southern Expressway.

So we looked at those sorts of things, but we've already looked at about seven named spots in total on the rail corridor that name themselves to these developments.

In a thirty-year plan for Adelaide that's just been released, it makes it very clear that we expect this to be the engine room of most development over the next decade or so. We've got very clear plans to achieve that.

One of the important things that you've got to do is make sure the private sector gets it and can make money out of it. Otherwise, it won't happen. That's why we took about twenty developers and planners overseas. If you're especially clever at risking money, you never like to do something that hasn't been done before.

It's very important to have done that. We think we've now got a bunch of developers who are keen on making use of the sites that we make available. We've got, starting with clips and then on down to children to grade sites.

You got the Nolanga Center, which in itself presents a real challenge because there are social issues around the way it's being developed now. We believe this is a great opportunity, not only to develop but to fix some of those social-service and public-service type issues.

It's a tremendous opportunity. The point about getting the private sector is that this needs to go on for thirty years. I don't imagine we'll be the government for thirty years, so it's important that you create the autonomic nervous system through the private sector that keeps it running.

Jeremy: Now, the private sector? Are they buying into the transit-oriented development at this stage?

Minister: Yeah. They're grading things, but make no mistake. The obvious trip was essential in getting those guys to see what can be done. What they've been saying is that the post is like Portland in Oregon, which has it very good. They started twenty, thirty years ago.

Jeremy: Quite a while ago.

Minister: You know most of the stages, and what we'd really like to do is cut out some of the stages and get to the bigger stuff.

Jeremy: Well, we can learn. We can learn from their mistakes. Similarly, we can then learn from their mistakes in Copenhagen and see what they've done, which has taken them forty and fifty years.

We can see the development. I saw a photograph on the Internet of Portland, and it was a sign that said, "Portland will be the Copenhagen of North America." Do you think Adelaide could be the Copenhagen of Australia?

Minister: I think that Adelaide can be the best city in Australia, the best capital, and I think we're a bit different. Adelaide has that stretch between the sea and the hills.

I do think that we can be a great mixture of high-quality and high density that provides amenity and that opens out to more broad-acre suburbs, where they interact. Public transport and cycling becomes a very big part of the future. I'm not sure that I'd want Adelaide to be anything but a really good Adelaide.

Already, it's a cracking place. I went out there for a ride Tuesday morning. If you like cycling, a ride up. I rode up into the hills and then down into the city and did a circuit back. There are not many places where you can have a hills ride and then scoot down and have a ride along the beach. It's a great place.

Jeremy: Similarly with the mountain bike trail network as well. I mean, there's the development of the hills, Face Sign. Eagle Park has been a wonderful achievement that we have. Opposite from the cycling community. It allows you just to ride up what was an old freeway to Eagle Mountain Bike Park.

Minister: It's there, as well as improving facilities. You get to know what is there and what they can use. Just point it out to me. If you want to learn a descent, grab a bike and get up to there, come back down from the bollards.

You've got a nice, big road where you can learn how to get a line through a corner a bit without risking yourself. There are great facilities for people. Now, with this tour, whenever I look back, I pity the blokes that run golf shops.

Because I reckon that in the Christmas presents there's been a decline in golf clubs and a rise in cycling gear.

Jeremy: A Carbon Five-O. Dad got a Carbon Five with a bottle cage this year. How do your kids feel about cycling?

Minister: Well, they're only five and two and a half, but Sage has got a bike. I bought her first bike last year. She rides along in her scooter. I'm going to get a mountain bike back off, made of lint and we can get the little girl on the back, and then Sadie can ride hers.

We can ride down the parklands with her, ride around. I think they'll like their bikes. Getting Sadie out of the water at the moment is a problem.

Jeremy: No. It's good. You've been a great ambassador for physical health and fitness through cycling. It's been good to see.

Minister: Well, I'm now facilitating with all my mates. Peter Kagow's got a bike. We're about three inches from getting the premiere run. I used to run a lot. You finish. As you get older, you finish a run and everything hurts. The joints hurt. The ankles hurt. Everything hurts.

Jeremy: Likewise.

Minister: I finish a long run. The bike, it just went over Nanny Net. That's cool.

Jeremy: That's good.

Minister: It's much easier.

Jeremy: What about your colleagues? I know that one of the last times we spoke, you were talking about getting more of your colleagues on bikes. Are they committing maybe to a regular politician's ride or something?

Minister: We could put one together. Michael Atkinson, of course, is always.

Jeremy: He's always been a keen cyclist.

Minister: Jay Witherell rides a fair bit on Bignol. Pragmatic Stuart O'Grady has been riding for years. He's played a bit in racing. He's only been out for a couple of rides in the last twelve months, but I've seen him racing. He's been on a clean-up. He's lost a lot of weight. I reckon he's ready for the bike.

We could put a good team together. We might get a few ringings.

Jeremy: It would be nice to invite some people from the cycling community come for a ride with you occasionally. It would be nice to have those Ed Harkin casual conversations you can have when you're riding a bike, and we can see if we can beat you up a hill as well.

Minister: It's not hard to beat me up a hill.

Jeremy: I don't know. I'm not very good at hill-climbing myself anymore. I'm riding on the flats.

Minister: My honey runs up a hill faster than I do.

Jeremy: Thank you very much for your time today. We do appreciate it. We hope to have a bit more interaction with you in the future and see you out on a ride with us. It'd be great.

Minister: If I can ride that funny bike of yours.

Jeremy: Funny bike? I can carry all sorts of things on it. Children, piles of hay, shopping. Anything you need to carry, you can carry on it.

Minister: Beautiful.

Jeremy: One less car, it says on it. But I think it's one less Ute, actually.

Minister: It's been fun. Yeah.

Jeremy: Excellent.

Minister: See you.

Jeremy: Thank you, Minister.

Angus: That was Jeremy Miller with the South Australian Minister of Transport, Patrick Conlon. This is the end of our first broadcast.