Ride goeth before a fall

Hyde Park last week again saw a crowd of two-wheelers gathered in high-vis gear to celebrate Ride to Work day. An estimated 150,000 riders registered for the event nationally, and Sydney also hosted a smaller gathering at Union Square in Pyrmont.

Lord Mayor Clover Moore and two of her team on Council, John McInerney and Di Tornai, all sporting bike helmets, faced the Hyde Park Crowd from a stage.

Clover’s black helmet was of course the coolest of the three, however after the event she fell off her bike, fractured her ankle and is now on crutches.

Ms Moore said the recently announced City Plan had extra floor-space incentives for new commercial and office development in the City Centre, including end of trip facilities such as showers, lockers and bike parking.

“Riding to work is becoming a whole lot easier and I’m delighted that such large institutions such as Westpac, Google, ING Australia, Telstra and Macquarie Bank are offering showers, lockers and bike parking for their staff,” Ms Moore said.

“We all need to do our bit to ease the congestion on our roads that threatens to bring our city to a halt if we don’t take decisive action now. So hopefully more companies – large and small – will incorporate end of trip facilities to encourage their staff to ride to work.”

But it wasn’t all smooth riding – at the nearby park entrance, a woman was venting her ire to some reporters about clashes with pedestrians in Hyde Park. She walked across the park every day on her way to work and said speeding riders wove unsafely among the pedestrians.

“They treat it like a road, and if one hits me I’ll come off the worst,” she said.

Neither she nor the reporters seemed aware that a new section of cycleway had opened along College Street adjacent to the park, linking with a citybound path at Park Street.

Hopefully that will relieve congestion in Hyde Park as cyclists find the new dedicated route. However on the day there seemed to be more pedestrians than riders using it.

by Michael Gormly