The Geelong council has shelved a Victorian government-funded bike lane project halfway through its construction. The decision means the city has lost almost three million dollars in government funding, drawn the ire of cyclists and angered the local state MP.
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00:00Ashley Goldstraw gets around Geelong by bike, but his regular commute isn't always safe.
00:08I seem to have an incident probably at least once a week just riding around town.
00:14Most days Mr Goldstraw uses this section of Geelong's new southern bike link.
00:19The two kilometre, two million dollar bike lane was touted as the first stage of a critical link
00:24connecting a quarter of the city's booming population with its CBD.
00:28But the city has shelved the project's second stage and now lost almost three million dollars in TAC funding.
00:35They're not willing to give up any convenience for cars or for the safety of cyclists.
00:42So rather than being anti-bike, I just think that they're anti-change.
00:47In 2022 the council voted not to award a contract for stage two,
00:52arguing the designs were unsafe and over-engineered, with a councillor saying
00:57this is our chance to put a pause on this.
00:59But it's unclear if that pause is now permanent, with a council statement confirming
01:04the city informed the Department of Transport that the project was not going ahead in March 2023,
01:10but on the other hand also saying the project hasn't been abandoned.
01:15Whatever the future of the bike lane might be, the TAC has confirmed that almost three million dollars
01:20in funding for the project has now been stripped from the council and redirected elsewhere.
01:26The move to shelve the Southern Link bike path may now put the city on a collision course with the state government.
01:32It comes just two years after five local MPs wrote a scathing letter to the city,
01:37detailing a growing lack of confidence in its ability to deliver on state-funded projects.
01:42And Geelong's state MP is once again unimpressed.
01:46The clever and creative city that cannot build a bike path,
01:51and are sending money back to government saying we don't want this money, we're not going to do it.
01:57It's pretty disgraceful really.
01:59Leaving local cyclists with little to manoeuvre.