Kingborough Council’s Bicycle Advisory Committee has been hard at work on a draft bike plan for the area, with a bigger committee and new members signed off by the council on Monday.
Committee members have drafted a bike plan with a list of priority projects which is now with staff for comment.
The next step will be for the plan to be sent to a graphic designer for layout and project visualisations and to a consultant for preliminary project design work. Once those steps are completed it will then go to the council to decide whether it can be released for public comment.
A new committee of 9 community members, up from 7, was agreed to by council and will meet for the first time soon. Ros Woodburn, Isaac Forster, Dylan Robbins, David McQuillen, Kate Allingham and Angela Wilson will join continuing members Rob Sheers, Suzanne Betts and Peter Tuft with Councillor Amanda Midgley as chair.
Support the Channel Museum bike racks
The committee has donated a new bike pump to the Channel Museum in Margate in recognition of the reinstatement of bike parking out the front.
Committee member Suzanne Betts was involved in getting the bike rack from a high school that was throwing it out. Initially, it has been placed at the front of the museum but then got moved around the back of the building in preference for a picnic table, leaving bike riders with nowhere to lock their bikes.
In the meantime, the Snug to Margate shared path has been finished and proving popular with local riders.
The committee sent the museum a letter to let them know more people were riding past its front door and may be enticed in for a coffee at the café if there was adequate bike parking.
The museum has agreed to trial the racks for six months and have given them a coat of red paint to spruce them up.
The committee recently visited the museum to present the bike pump and enjoy a meeting over coffees at the café.
Kingston infrastructure ride
While they were out and about, the committee visited a few sites that need new paths and connections to make them effective.
The Park and Ride being proposed for Huntingfield is in a central location for drivers but needs a few short sections of shared path to be built to make it convenient for local residents wanting to walk or ride to the site.
The site designs include a secure bike parking cage that could hold up to 26 bikes, so making it easier to ride to the site should be a priority.
There is a missing strip of footpath of about 200 metres along Huntingfield Avenue that would connect current residents and new residents in the government’s upcoming development. The committee looked at the road reservation and there is space there to build a footpath that would directly link to the site.
And on the other side of Huntingfield Avenue a path leading from the Algona Road underpass exit up to the current shared path on Channel Highway would provide a quick link for people who find it difficult to cross the roundabout in heavy traffic.
The other issue that is current thanks to a petition to council from residents, is safe riding and walking links from new housing estates at Spring Farm and Whitewater to the surrounding area. The committee looked at potential path connections, the development of a path along Whitewater Creek as well as the space available to build separated lanes on the Channel Highway between Huntingfield and Kingston.