Elizabeth Street protected lanes
Elizabeth Street protected lanes
Coppin Street protected lanes

For over two decades, Yarra has been one of Melbourne’s best areas to walk and ride, and we know lots of people love living here because of the opportunity to walk or cycle to work, school, or home.

Add your name to our petition: Don’t risk our safety in 2025 – tell Yarra Council not to remove safe cycling lanes

But our safe, well-used protected bike lanes are at risk.

Just days after getting elected in November 2024, new councillors on the Yarra Council threw down plans to explore removing the bike-friendly pop-ups in Richmond at Coppin Street, scrapping the barriers that help separate people on bikes from car traffic, and narrowing the Elizabeth Street protected bike lanes to increase car parking.

Julian O’Shea talks about why narrow bike lanes are like bad, weird and quirky design. Subscribe to his youtube channel for his upcoming series: Design Revolution

At the next Yarra Council meeting on Tuesday 11 February 2025, councillors will decide on the future of these lanes – and we want safe cycle routes to stay for everyone who lives, works, studies, and visits Yarra to use.

With some newly elected councillors saying bike lanes ‘create congestion’ or ‘I can tell you, are hardly used,’ or that giving cyclists options to navigate traffic means ‘we’re ignoring the community,’ we’re seriously worried that sounds like gaslighting that puts our safe protected lanes are at risk in Yarra.

Join us in telling Yarra Council we want to keep safe, accessible routes to work, school, home, and for exercise by bike and on foot.

This isn’t about an ideological battle, as one councillor put it – it’s facts.

People are getting killed on our roads (50% rise in bicycle rider deaths in last 12 months) and a recent article in The Age found that women are avoiding cycling because of a lack of proper, protected cycle paths, aggressive drivers, and sexual harassment. (Catcalls, aggression, male domination: Why women aren’t cycling)

Infrastructure Victoria found that 200,000 short car or public transport trips in Melbourne every day could be walked or cycled instead, which would ease congestion on local roads and crowding on public transport. 

The Spaces We Share: Why 78% Of People In Melbourne Are Afraid Of These Bike Lanes. Nb: in happier news, St Kilda Road protected lanes have been completed since this video was made

Janet McCalman’s award-winning classic ‘Struggletown, Public and Private Life in Richmond 1900-1965’ makes reference to horrifying road fatalities statistics of the post war era:

“In April 1948, eighteen people were killed on Richmond’s roads; in April 1949 no fewer than thirty died – nine of them in Punt Road, another nine on Bridge Road, three in Swan Street and nine elsewhere in Richmond”

These awful road fatality figures are unknown in today’s somewhat more affluent Richmond and really do show how residents’ lives have benefited so much from consistent improvements to road safety and design.

Yarra councillors must pay heed to what has been created over the generations, respect what an older Richmond and the inner suburbs suffered, and keep building upon that legacy for safer streets for everyone in Abbotsford, Alphington, Burnley, Carlton North, Clifton Hill, Cremorne, Collingwood, Fairfield, Fitzroy, Fitzroy North, Princes Hill and Richmond, as well as the people who visit (and spend) in Yarra.

We also know that Yarra has some of the highest numbers of people choosing to walk or ride to work in Australia, and that Carlton North, Collingwood and Fitzroy, are all Yarra suburbs within the city’s top ten most walkable. 

Let’s keep it that way, and let’s raise Richmond to the same standard!

In the midst of a cost-of-living and climate crisis where safe walking and cycling infrastructure is needed more than ever, please add your name to our petition to show councillors we want more opportunities to move and meet, safely, without fear – and not less.

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