A few days after my 30th birthday, I was on my way to a new job at a film production company. The sun was shining, and my brand-new bike was a joy to ride as I turned into the bike lane on Baptist St, Surry Hills. The next thing I remember was screaming and a bus coming toward me as I slid along the bitumen on my back.
I’d been “doored” by a van driver who timed his opening perfectly to snap my collarbone cleanly in two. People at the bus stop stepped onto the road and prevented me from being run over.
A bike path built on Rydge Street in North Sydney is typical of the dangerous design of bike lanes that puts cyclists at risk from car doors swinging into their path. Credit: Nigel Gladstone
In the 15 years since, I’ve continued to commute by bike despite enduring abuse, being called “selfish” for choosing to pedal or that I should not be on the road because “I don’t pay rego”.
It’s an undeniable truth that Sydney hates bikes. Share bikes are thrown into rivers, ponds and formed into scrap-heap sculptures. People regularly abuse cyclists on talkback radio. Pedestrians and politicians describe riders as a “menace”. But it’s the drivers who are the menace. It’s time we started to hate cars for very rational reasons.
Motorists kill dogs, cats and other animals daily. They emit unpleasant odours and noises when performing basic functions like accelerating, braking, booming bad music or beeping each other due to the frustrations they feel when too many of them are around, go too slow, or change lanes.
They drive up the cost of living and housing with compulsory parking spaces adding thousands to the price of apartments and millions more for almost every other type of building. Furthermore, they occupy millions of metres of public space.
A new bike path alongside the harbour bridge is made more dangerous by a bollard.Credit: Nigel Gladstone
Hospitals are burdened by the thousands of people injured or killed by drivers each year. And yet millions more in tax revenue is now being gifted to drivers who use toll roads as governments at all levels have their budgets burdened by billions for new and old bitumen.
We need roads for freight and tradies and not everyone can cope or commute without a car. But it’s time we start to seriously consider better, cheaper, healthier ways to ease the city’s transport burden.
Hate cyclists? You really should hate cars instead
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15.02.2024
A few days after my 30th birthday, I was on my way to a new job at a film production company. The sun was shining, and my brand-new bike was a joy to ride as I turned into the bike lane on Baptist St, Surry Hills. The next thing I remember was screaming and a bus coming toward me as I slid along the bitumen on my back.
I’d been “doored” by a van driver who timed his opening perfectly to snap my collarbone cleanly in two. People at the bus stop stepped onto the road and prevented me from being run over.
A bike path built on Rydge Street in North Sydney is typical of the dangerous........
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