It’s been impossible to miss the eruption of attention that Unley Road has been receiving lately. Seemingly out of nowhere there has been a proposal to remove the bike lanes on Unley Road, with the stated aim of making space for a median strip and enabling ‘more consistent traffic flow’.
Much of the discussion surrounding this proposal to date has been about the merit of keeping bike lanes vs removing them, or of whether this is the best way to improve ‘traffic flow’. As a group dedicated to cycling and walking we are of course interested in cycling safety and concerned when even the token protection afforded by painted gutter bike lanes is removed. However, I feel that many of the discussions to date miss the bigger picture that is being put into question here: what sort of place do we want Unley Rd to be?
Unley Road is caught in the tension between being a street and being a road. In Strong Towns’ seminal distinction, a road is a space that facilitates the smooth and efficient movements of large amounts of people, whereas street is a place for lingering, for commerce and human interaction. These two ideas tend to work at cross purposes to each other: the visual complexity, stop-start-turn-cross movements and high pedestrian densities of a street inevitably slow down car traffic, while the high speed and high volumes of car traffic of a road make it an unsafe and unpleasant place to carry out the activities of daily life, especially if you’re not in a car. When places try to be both a street and a road at the same time they are said to be stroads, a strange hybrid that tries to be everything and as a consequence fails at both.
Unley Road is absolutely a stroad. Ask anyone who has driven there and they’ll tell you how frustrating it is to traverse its length. At the same time, when you are on foot it is loud, crossing the side streets feels dangerous, and tellingly there is no outdoor dining whatsoever. Sadly, many of the shopfronts are vacant. It’s a huge contrast to the nearby King William Rd, which is a vibrant and pleasant place to be.
Recently, there have been moves to make Unley Road a nicer place to be - to make it more of a street. Council petitioned to make Unley Rd 50km/hr in order to “improve pedestrian safety and make the area a destination rather than a thoroughfare”. Two months ago, this petition was accepted by the State Government, which controls the roadway. There are new footpaths and streetscape improvements on their way this financial year. Finally, Unley Rd is once again becoming a place for people to live, with two apartment buildings completed recently and more on the way - including a complex developed by the council themselves!
This brings us back to the issue at hand - the proposal to remove the bike lanes on Unley Rd. I don’t believe we can assess the merits (or otherwise) of this proposal without a consideration of why it is being put forward. If road space was to be reallocated to allow room for a generous median that would narrow the car lanes, slow down traffic and make the road significantly safer and more convenient to be and even cross along its length, then sure, bring it on! That would be fantastic for walkability, and we here at Unley BUG always advocate for better cycling and walking in our city.
But it’s not. Instead, this proposal is about “enabling a more consistent traffic flow” and to “prevent traffic blockages”. It’s about pushing Unley Road into being less of a street, and more of a road. The consequences of such a motive are far more significant than just the removal of some part-time bike lanes. Increasing car traffic and speed will make Unley Rd a more unpleasant place to be, more difficult and dangerous to cross on foot, and further turn the screws on businesses that are already struggling.
Unley Road deserves better. It’s in the heart of our city, hosting our civic centre, shops, cafes and businesses of every size, a school, and increasingly people’s homes. We can and should be making changes that prioritise being there rather than travelling through. When we start to think in this way, with this goal in mind, a different path forward emerges. Let’s slow down the cars, make more space for walking, cycling, dining and just being. If we need to move people, sure, but let’s do it in a way that adds to the accessibility and amenity of the area rather than taking it away. Like, say, instead of making room for a median, what if we made room for the return of trams along Unley Rd, as my thrown-together collage at the beginning of this post shows? Trams can, after all, carry many times more people than a lane of car traffic, if designed well.
It’s not such a crazy idea if you think about it. Not even for Unley Rd. After all, it has been done before!
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