Dealing with bicycle congestion - not Sydney

Copenhagen the 'City of Cyclists' with 33% of daily commuter trips to the CBD on bicycle - compared to 2% in Sydney (our bicycle plan aims to increase that to 10% by 2016). Copenhagen's cycling planners deal with challenges that do not confront Sydney's transport planners - yet. When eCouncillor visited Copenhagen Town Hall for a day and cycled around the city with the planners including Troels Andersen as they pointed out their difficulties including bicycle congestion at intersections, parking and balancing the right of way at key intersections. The congestion problem was causing the Council to widen major cycle lanes on some of Europes busiest bicycle lanes. In addition new lights separating out bicycle movements from other cars at intersection are installed in most locations. News today (below) that new 'green wave lanes' are being installed to assist with the smooth flow of bikes. 'Waves' have been trialed on Odense and were very successful. Sydney's not ready for them yes but maybe in 2020.

Cyclists riding a green wave A string of synchronised green lights promises to cut travel times on one of Europe's busiest bike lanes
Cyclists travelling along one of Copenhagen's most congested thoroughfares can now say goodbye to red lights and the stop-and-go of rush hour traffic. City officials unveiled the first 'green wave' lane for bikes in the Nørrebro neighbourhood Wednesday.
The green wave bike line times eleven traffic lights to match bicyclists average speed. Travel times on the 2.5 km stretch are expected to be reduced by three minutes.
Reducing travel time makes sense, according to civil engineer Troels Andersen, but the psychological effect of not constantly seeing red is even more important.
'If cyclists have to stop at every traffic light, they get fed up and feel unappreciated. In the worst case, they make the switch to cars,' he told daily newspaper dato.
A 'green wave' sign with a cyclist logo helps direct two-wheeled commuters from side streets to their express lane.
As morning traffic streams into the city, the green wave flows toward central Copenhagen. From noon until 6pm, the wave shifts directions and gives cyclists a speedy exit out.
Some 30,000 cyclists are expected to benefit from the system every day. Klaus Bondam, deputy mayor for environmental affairs, hopes the path will cement the Copenhagen as the world capital of commuter cycling.
'Copenhagen is going to be the world's best cycling city. And Nørrebrogade is probably one Europe's busiest bike lanes,' said Bondam.
The new lane requires cyclists to adjust their biking habits, however, according to Harry Lahrmann, a traffic researcher at Aalborg University.
'In order for a green wave to work, cyclists will have to ride at basically the same speed as everyone else. That's probably more difficult than for cars. A number of cyclists race ahead at 25 km per hour, so they won't get much out of the lane.'
Motorists, meanwhile, will have to grow used to the sight of cyclists overtaking them in rush hour traffic.
The Copenhagen Post

Sartor - Lord Mayor of NSW

The ALP Minister for building personal empires - Frank Sartor (Planning actually) has been kicking down planning doors and community consultation processes all over NSW and seizing development projects from local government. Using unprecedented 'Section 3A' powers to remove planning decisions from democratically elected Councils and their democratically adopted and implemented planning codes (LEP's and DCP's) he has transferred the power over dozens of sites and projects worth millions to his in tray. In the City of Sydney eCouncillor readers will remember that he intervened to take the CUB site in Chippendale from the Council and in so doing served notice on his own CSPC planning hybrid that sits like a cuckoo in Council's nest. More on the CSPC soon with mooted changes to the City of Sydney Act. to increase the power of Frank's puppet Council.

Why is Frank pulling the wings off Council butterflies and trashing the landmark EP&A Act? Well we know his view on Councillors in that famously recorded conversation 'pissants'. After coming up through the ranks as a 'community independent' (som,thing I like to remind Clover and her team of) he quickly recognised the limitation of that career path and jumped in bed with the ALP - much to the horror of many ALP rank and file who had come to loath his arrogant approach as Lord Mayor. In return for his lifetime public funded pension as an ALP Minister, Frank had to deliver - he has had to push development in the state to stop the economy from sliding further behind the rest of Australia and even going into a state recession. When he seized the CUB site and its potential 3000 apartments eCouncillor predicted a hard hat and plans media pic op before the March 07 state election. 'Frank getting on with the job' or similar. It's been 3 months now and no obvious progress for all the hot air that Council (read Frank's CSPC) had been taking too long!

Elizabeth Farrelly in today's SMH in her usual frank (no pun) and inimitable style takes 3A to task. Reproduced below because it's worth reading:


3A projects add a new dimension to rules

Elizabeth Farrelly October 25, 2006

THE real problem with the arrogance that typically afflicts our upper echelons is not that it's offensive and tedious - which it is - but that it quickly becomes a learning disability, condemning sufferers to repeat their mistakes ad nauseam. That's if you weren't sick the first time.
Not surprisingly, the symptom is most marked in those who cocoon themselves with legions of head-patters, back-scratchers and toe rags. This makes Macquarie Street a hot spot. And sure, there are medics on hand. But they need your support, too. Not just your votes and taxes; they need your sympathy and understanding.
Which may be why they've bothered to mount the microscopic exhibition on the development formerly known as East Darling Harbour. You can visit or read the propaganda on the net.
But to fix your eyes on the substance of the 400-odd page document, since there's no takeout copy, it's back to the 54 slow-loading PDF files lined up like Daleks on the departmental website.
East Darling Harbour, or Barangaroo if you want its new moniker, is one of more than 70 projects in the metropolitan area - with as many again in the rest of the state - to be called in to the minister in the new planning legislation's first year.
Officially, some are "state significant" or "critical infrastructure". Others are merely "major projects". Colloquially, however, they're all known as "3A projects", after the part of the act under which they are arraigned; the part that gives the minister unprecedented discretion.
Because the economy's problem, as you know, is not that we spent two euphoric weeks peeing a gazillion up against the Olympics wall and are now in the decade of paying for it. The problem is that councils have consulted too wide and long with their constituents, impeding important development projects, starving the coffers and shrinking the economy.
So the Government was forced to add part 3A to the Planning Act "to facilitate infrastructure and other planning reform; and for other purposes".
At the time, no one took much notice. Since then, though, as developers crawl on broken glass to have projects 3A-listed and community after community has been stonewalled or sidelined, the rumblings have grown.
Quite properly, 3A projects include coalmines and wind-farms, road tunnels and rail terminals, hospitals and power stations. They also include cash oozing behemoths such as the Foster's site on Broadway and East Darling Harbour.

As well, hidden among 3A's smoke and mirrors are a number of lesser projects whose statewide significance isn't immediately obvious: the low-rise residential Pemulwuy Project on The Block in Redfern, which the minister has vocally opposed; the Government's development of the old Redfern school, which he presumably supports; a two-storey, six-unit building by Rose Corp at Canada Bay; a huge development, also by Rose Corp and refused by both council and court, on ecologically sensitive land at the coastal mining town of Catherine Hill Bay; the reviled Coca-Cola warehouse in Northmead; the 11-storey St Vinnie's Caritas residential development in Darlinghurst; the new law building at Sydney University; the Global Switch building in Ultimo; the Australian Film TV and Radio School building at Fox Studios; and the proposed lime and cement terminal at White Bay.
Less "infrastructure and planning reform", more "other purposes".
Which, of course, is where the arrogance comes in. Fast-tracking in NSW has left a trail of white-elephant skeletons, such as Darling Harbour and the airport rail link, but does the Government learn? No way.
The act gives the minister immense discretion about not just content, but publishing his criteria, or even his decision. At the same time it suspends, for the occasion, virtually all other planning legislation - conservation, heritage, bushfire, fisheries, coastal management and threatened species - and leaves the public with severely curtailed rights of appeal.
No wonder this is a club every developer in town wants to be in.
Less apparent, but no less significant, is the new 3A Alliance, a collection of disaffected and disenfranchised community groups. It's the first sign that planning in NSW may get muscular yet.
High on the 3A projects list is, of course, East Darling Harbour - renamed Barangaroo with the same cynicism that saw Harry Triguboff deliver his anti-tree rant with an Aboriginal painting as backdrop. After announcing the winning Hill Thalis Berkmeier competition scheme in March, the Government commissioned the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority to prepare a new East Darling Harbour Concept Plan.
It was always a gentle, polite kind of scheme. Now, with every soupcon of panache or personality (and virtually every mention of the architects) surgically removed, it recalls two sobering facts: that "concept plan" now means what you have when there is no concept; and that we still, as a culture, have huge difficulty shedding the suburban house-and-lawn mindset.
There's no commitment to any further consultation. Zero.
So while the blurb wishfully cites Bilbao, London's Southbank and Berlin's Potsdamer Platz as exemplars, it forgets that city-changing architecture needs flair, content and intense local flavour - plus, ideally, a Pritzker-winning architect.
A bit of warmed-over North Ryde office park, grown to 60 storeys, probably won't do it.
Elizabeth Farrelly writes on planning, architecture and aesthetics for the Herald.

Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of Hungarian Uprising

eCouncillor was honoured to attended the Church service at St Mary's cathedral organised by the Australian Hungarian community to mark the 50th anniversary of the anti-Soviet popular uprising in Budapest. It was a very moving service conducted in the presence of community and civic leaders including the Governor of NSW, the Hungarian ambassador to Australia and the HOn. Don Harwin MLC. An amazing choir of 60 people traveled to Australia to sing at the service.

The uprising (a decade before eCouncillor was born) was the brief flowering of democracy that was brutally crushed by a Soviet invasion. 33 years later the one party communists state would be dismantled in 1989. Australia was to benefit from the exodus of the intelligentsia escaping retribution and oppression under the communist return in 1956. One such refugee was the family of former Liberal Premier and business leader Nick Greiner AO.

Sadly the celebrations overnight in Budapest were not as united as Sydney's church service including the extraordinary scene when radical protesters seized a museum piece soviet era tank in the picture below.

Hungary police tackle protesters

Hungarian police faced protesters in a Soviet-era tank Hungarian police are tackling the remnants of a group of violent protesters who disrupted celebrations marking the 1956 anti-Soviet uprising.
Tear gas and rubber bullets were used to quell anti-government protests in Budapest, where officials laid flowers to mark the uprising 50 years ago.
Some protesters commandeered a tank taken from an uprising exhibition. Read more at BBC here

Wild Kids - the far side of Council

Someone called Jake McPherson [jakemcpherson4456@hotmail.com] has taken the time to research my family name and send me this explanation via emails from the Australian Museum web site. He seems to think it's funny and so do I. Each day when I am called 'Duck' from preschool to today I think 'if only I had a dollar ...' . It's the name that has stuck and I'm quite fond of it. A former mayor used to refer to me as Councillor Fluffy Duck that inevitably was shortened to 'fluffy' to the confused looks of friends over post Council dinner. I even have a pretty good quality carved wooden hand painted Mallard in my Town Hall office on the shelf watching over me. Thanks Jake - it goes to show that not all correspondence is about parking police or garbage bins!


Wild kids


Mallards were introduced into Australia from the Northern Hemisphere and have been breeding with our native Pacific Black Duck.

Common name: Mallard Scientific name: Anas platyrhynchos Photo: A. Skates




Mallard

Mallards are ducks that live near ponds, lakes and dams on urban and rural land in south-eastern Australia. The males have a green head, yellow beak and chestnut coloured breast. The females are brown all over. They both have flat beaks with thin plates to sieve food particles out of the water. They have feet with three webbed toes and one very small back toe.
Mallards call with a loud quack.


This is a male Mallard swimming with some ducklings.

Mallards look for small plants and animals in the water. They use their beak to feel around in the muddy bottom of ponds, lakes and dams for food. On land they look for seeds, flowers, food scraps and insects in the morning and late afternoon.


Mallards make nests from a scrape on the ground lined with a small amount of grass. The female lays eight to twelve glossy, light green eggs that she sits on for 26 to 28 days. When the eggs hatch the ducklings are covered in soft down. They follow their parents to water within a day of hatching and can swim as soon as they reach water. The ducklings can feed themselves shortly after hatching and have feathers and are ready to fly in seven to eight weeks.

Copyright © Australian Museum, 2003

Front page debate for Liberal Women

Federal Liberal Party President and a well known local Liberal party member, Chris McDiven has caused a stir in Canberra with her front page comments in today's Australian comparing Labor's first wives club to the Liberal party's successful election of female parliamentarians based only on merit. Read about it below. Chris and eCouncillor have traveled parallel political paths since the early 90's when Chris was President of the NSW Women's Council and I was President of the NSW Young Liberal Council. Subsequently Chris had several terms as the NSW State President and then to the Federal Presidency. Each position fought for in democratic ballots and won on hard work and merit. Chris has ruled out a parliamentary career after the repeated urgings of her supporters including eCouncillor.



The Australian

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20566215-2702,00.html


Top Lib mocks Labor's ex-wives club
Dennis Shanahan, Political editor
October 12, 2006

THE Liberal Party's first lady has taken a swipe at the Labor Party sisterhood, branding it an ex-wives' club that had got ahead by connections and embarrassing quotas.
The Liberal Party's federal president, Chris McDiven, has pulled no punches in her assessment of female Labor MPs as she prepares to celebrate Liberal women in cabinet.
"If you look at our women, they represent a wide selection of careers, career paths into parliament and a wide diversity of backgrounds, whereas if you look at the Labor women, you'll find that nearly everyone has got there through their family connections - they're 'wives of', 'ex-wives of', 'daughters of', 'sisters of'. It is an interesting comparison," Ms McDiven told The Australian yesterday.
Ms McDiven stepped into the media spotlight yesterday for the first time since she was elected 16 months ago as the Liberal Party's first female federal president.
A confessed "backroom girl" who has not sought election to parliament herself, the 58-year-old mother of two, former teacher, small businesswoman and investment manager also took pity on her ALP counterpart, NSW state MP Linda Burney, who is guaranteed a term as ALP president because of affirmative action.
Ms Burney ran last in the current four-way ALP presidency race - well behind former Labor leader Simon Crean - but will be given a turn as ALP president in 2009 while Mr Crean misses out.
"Personally I feel a bit sorry for Linda Burney," Ms McDiven said at the Liberal Party headquarters yesterday. "I feel much prouder that I have managed to get to this position on my merit. She's getting there, unfortunately for her, as a number on affirmative action. I don't think that will help her in the long term."
Ms McDiven, who ran a program training women candidates that is credited with doubling the number of women Liberal MPs at the 1996 election, said the Liberal way was to be elected on merit without quotas.
"Personally, if I had got myself into parliament because I was a 'number' I would not be completely satisfied with that," she said.
"I would like to think I got there on merit. Our women can hold their heads up and say they got there completely on merit."
Ms McDiven said many Labor MPs got into parliament on the back of family or marital connections but the Liberal Party was trying to encourage women to come forward and be elected on merit.
"When we set up the training program I learnt then that we had to go and find women; women tend not to put themselves forward," she said.
"We are seriously looking for women with talent to put themselves forward.
"I have spoken to Republican women in the US and the Conservative Party in the UK, they all say the same thing, men tend to put themselves forward."
Ms McDiven said she "got a buzz" when Julie Bishop was appointed as the first female Liberal cabinet minister from the House of Representatives and took pride in the record three women who were now in cabinet.
She said energetic new NSW senator Connie Fierravanti-Wells came through the Liberal program.
Ms McDiven said she did not believe gender had played a part in the contretemps in NSW over the state preselection battle for the high-profile Pru Goward.
She believed geographic reasons were important because the seat Ms Goward was now standing in, near Yass, was closer to where she lived.
Ms McDiven is attending a gala dinner tonight in Canberra to celebrate the record number of women in the Coalition cabinet.