ICYMI, the latest Hobart City News features a photo of our new Wombat Crossing - it's on Hill Street, helping people cross safely from the pharmacy towards Lansdowne Crescent School.
This photo was taken on 8 Feb 2019, in the first week of school this year, when the school community organised a "Stride and Ride Day". Kids, parents and teachers met at four gathering points around West Hobart and all walked and rode their bikes to school together. It was great fun for the kids and helped them and their parents see how it might be possible to walk and ride to school without resorting to using cars.
For the first and second weeks of the school term, members of WHEN and other WeHo community members carefully observed the wombat crossing in the busy hour both before and after school. We counted the numbers of children and adults using the crossing, and observed the behaviour of the drivers at this new road feature.
Our most important finding is that drivers are now braking and slowing down at this busy intersection, and courtesy towards pedestrians crossing the road was pretty good. Pedestrians were becoming more confident through the period, and we thought that pedestrians choosing to cross at this corner might be increasing in number. There is a new safer crossing point up at Hamilton Street as well, where the new "bus platform" is, and we saw lots of people crossing there as well.
Council will be engaging a consultant to do a formal evaluation of the safety improvements effected by the new road designs on Hill Street, and it will be interesting to see what they find. We hope that more wombat crossings will be installed around West Hobart to calm traffic further and make it safer for all of us to use the street.
Did you know that the works currently being undertaken on Lansdowne Crescent, between Alison and Warwick Streets, will also include a "raised threshold" on Poets Rd? This will encourage cars exitting Poets Rd to slow down properly and will improve safety for children and adults crossing Poets Rd.
There are some new short stretches of on-road painted bikelane along Hill Street, and some mini bikelanes through the new improved pedestrian crossing points. Riders have mixed views about such onroad painted bikelanes. While it is nice to have an "invitation to ride", these bikelanes are actually located within the "dooring zone" i.e. where drivers tend to open their doors without looking to see if anyone is steaming up the road towards them first.
If you're a driver, please make every effort to look carefully before opening your car door. Because this sort of bikelane is not very safe for riders, some will choose to ride in the main traffic lane, especially if they are about to turn right, and some will choose to ride on the footpath. So please don't be surprised about that.
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