Cheeky Transport

Rolling With Clover Rally Ride, Sunday 1 April

More info - http://www.facebook.com/RollingWithClover

Rolling With Clover Rally Ride.

Keep Sydney Moving

Sunday 1 April

Noon, Sydney Town Hall

Watershed needs a Cycling Promotion Volunteer

The Watershed Cycling Promotion Volunteer promotes cycling and bike culture broadly through networking with cycling organisations, support of local bike projects and development of projects and initiatives, including The Watershed Bike Library.

KEY OBJECTIVES

• Maintain strong relationships with local cycling organizations
• Work with Watershed staff to maintain the Watershed Bike Library
• Promote The Watershed Bike Library at local events in order to increase membership and loans
• Develop other cycling promotion initiatives

TIME COMMITMENT AND DURATION

• Approx 1 day per week, may vary according to project need.
• Volunteering can be undertaken any day between Tuesday and Friday, 10am and 4pm, and Thursdays until 7pm
• This position is ongoing.

Preferred start date: March 2011

KEY TASKS

• Administering Bike Library loans and memberships
• Contributing to research and evaluation reports
• Networking and maintaining relationships with cycling groups and partner organisations
• Organising and participating in promotional activities
• Develop other cycling promotion project activities as required

RELATIONSHIPS

Reporting to Dianne Moy and working with the rest of the Watershed team.

PERSON SPECIFICATION

Essential Criteria

• A love of bikes
• Passion and initiative
• Strong administrative skills
• Strong research skills
• Excellent interpersonal skills
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills

Desirable criteria

• Strong networks with cycling organisations

APPLICATIONS

Email Dianne Moy (watershed@marrickville.nsw.gov.au) outlining how you meet the criteria for the position.

Shaping Sydney’s Future: Commenting on the City Plan

From BikeSydney‘s website

BIKESydney is preparing to comment on the City of Sydney’s draft City Plan – the set of planning controls that will guide future development throughout the LGA.

The City Plan consists of a Local Environmental Plan (LEP) and Development Control Plan (DCP) and supporting information. The LEP is the principal legal document for controlling development and guiding planning decisions made by Council. The DCP is a non-legal document which supports the LEP with more detailed planning and design guidelines.

These draft documents are on public exhibition until April 4.

What we’re doing

We’re holding a workshop to discuss the sections of the documents that relate to bicycle transport and prepare comments for our formal submission to the Council. In the afternoon we may ride some of the proposed network routes to look at any particular concerns.

Saturday March 5
Kicking off 10am
Benledi Room, Glebe Library, 186 Glebe Point Road, Glebe

Agenda

LEP

• End of journey facilities for bicycle riders (Part 6)
• Car parks  (Part 7)

DCP

• Pedestrian and Bike Links (Section 2- 2.1.9)
• Streets, lanes and footpaths (Section 2 – 2.2)
• Transport and Parking (Section 2 – 2.15 and Schedule 9)
• Cycling plans for specific areas
  • Pedestrian and Bike links Green Square (Section 4 – 4.2.5)
  • Epsom Park – Green Square (Section 4 – 4.3)
  • Green Square – Lachlan(Section 4 – 4.4)
  • Ashmore Neighbourhood(Section 4 – 4.5)
  • Alexandra Canal (Section 4 – 5.1)
  • Bourke Road, Alexandria(Section 5 – 5.2.1-2)
  • Huntley Street, Alexandria(Section 5 – 5.2.3)
• The 24 cycleways maps (the network outlined in the maps is an evolution of that provided in the Cycle Strategy and Action Plan: 2007-17)

How to get involved?

• Read through the documents.
• Have a look at the maps (also read through Section 4 of the Cycle Strategy).
• Note down what you think is good and what needs improvement.
• Let us know if we’ve missed an section you think could impact cycling.
• Come along to the meeting…or if you can’t make it send us an email with your notes.

RSVP (so we know we’ve got enough room and snacks)
elaena.gardner@bikesydney.org

City of Sydney is awesome!

Check out the cycling recommendations from yesterdays planning meeting which were ALL APPROVED!

http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/Council/documents/meetings/2010/Committee/Planning/291110/101129_PDTC_ITEM03.pdf

thankyou to everyone involved

The Bike Life..

Since my little girl was born, I’ve not had as much opportunity to get on my bikes in a way that used to be pretty ordinary for me, but I had a chance on Friday night. The family were settled in and I had a date with some top notch ramen and the flicks.

The inclement weather almost kept me at home, but I was admonished to “Man-up, ladybird, and put your poncho on”, which I duly did and cruised into town.

I’ve got to look into finding more stock of quality rain capes, cos teamed with my guards, Schmidt, Skully’s and PDW taillight, I was warm, dry and well illuminated all the way. (I didn’t learn my lesson though, and got caught cape-less on guard-less bike in a bucketing on Sunday evening – luckily I was able to seek shelter in The Concordia Club and get lubricated enough that I didn’t mind the rain on the way home).

Regardless of the weather, the incident that prompted this post was still to come. After a stellar bowl of noodles, I was caught short looking for a place to secure my bike outside the Hoyts on George St, and chose a dubious looking set of bannisters to lock up to. Just as I walked away, a security guard came barrelling up with the standard “Hey mate, you can’t lock your bike there!”, to which I replied, with just a touch of implied snarkiness, “Well where’s a good spot around here for me to leave it?”.

I was ready for a casual dismissal of my problem, so when the reply was “Well, if you’re here to see a movie, I guess I could chuck it in the loading dock for you”, I was totally floored. I followed the guard down some flights of stairs and through a fire exit, and locked my bike to a exposed water pipe, with the reassurance that “It’ll be fine here, no-one ever comes down, give me a call when your movie finishes and I’ll make sure you can get out okay”.

Suffice it to say that Gumshara Ramen is the best in Sydney, you gotta go see Inception, and I had a great midnight ride home to Marrickville through rain-slick back streets and alleyways.

I wanted to write this for the blog, cos the debate about bike lanes and cycling in the city is never gonna make everyone happy. But when instead of telling you to “Fuck off buddy, I don’t care where you put your bike”, you get an almost valet-like service from a Hoyts security guard, it certainly makes me feel that Sydney is ever so slowly becoming a city that makes it easier to live the bike life.

The Battle For Sydney

Dave and I were interviewed a few months ago for this cool mini-doco about the state of cycling in Sydney. Check it out.

Follow Darryl – King St Cycle Bypass

Congrats to whoever made these rad signs that have appeared all the way down the laneway next to the shop. The lane runs parallel to King St, almost all the way to Erskineville Rd, and is heaps better for riding.

If you made them, get in touch in with us. We’ll give you some 3M reflective tape, so the signs show up at night.

I’m trying to figure out if they’re inspired by Run DMC.

Ride to Work Day is this wednesday

We believe that every day is ride to work and school and uni and the shops day, but 14 October 2009 is the official, compulsory Ride to Work Day. There’s breakfasts and events all over, including at RPA, and a biggun at Hyde Park

What are you doing??

Inner West Greenway Submissions

We’re big supporters of the Inner West Greenway project – it’s a plan to connect Cooks River and Iron Cove with a bike path/park/transport corridor along the old Dulwich Hill freight rail line.

The plans are currently on exhibition with Leichhardt, Marrickville and Ashfield council, and they’re inviting public comments. We’d really encourage everyone to write a letter or an email to say how much you would like it to be a cycleway. There is a movement to make it an exclusive lightrail route, which will mean NO BIKES at all on this sweet, flat scenic ride from the cooks river into the city Via Rozelle.

So, yeah, vote bikes!

Introducing Sydneycyclist.com

Yeah, I know, it’s been up for a while, but I’ve been waiting for Damiens official Launch. ANyway, check it out, it’s got forums, photos, blogs, all Sydney related, and more

sydneycyclist.com