![Disappointed: Simon Potter of Fletcher is unhappy the well-used Jesmond Park cycleway will be cut to make way for the new section of the Newcastle Inner City Bypass. Picture: Max Mason-Hubers. Disappointed: Simon Potter of Fletcher is unhappy the well-used Jesmond Park cycleway will be cut to make way for the new section of the Newcastle Inner City Bypass. Picture: Max Mason-Hubers.](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/U6sg88yptnWPBj3pxEuthQ/4163577e-97f4-401a-991d-b97bf53aa09e.jpg/r0_41_4659_2930_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
CYCLISTS are dismayed that a popular shared pathway in Jesmond will be cut in the latest Newcastle Inner City Bypass design.
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While pedestrians and cyclists have applauded many aspects of the refined design of the $280 million Rankin Park-to-Jesmond bypass, Newcastle Cycleways Movement president Peter Lee said “the devil is in the detail.”
Mr Lee was pleased that a traffic light crossing on Newcastle Road would be replaced with a pedestrian bridge, and that the new plan offered cyclists a connection to the back of John Hunter Hospital. But he was disappointed a well-used shared pathway in Jesmond Park would be cut.
“That is the real negative of this design, that a continuing, existing path has been cut, and we will now have four sets of crossings within a couple of hundred metres,” Mr Lee said.
“It will seriously slow down pedestrian users.”
He explained that people would prefer to drive if the ride was not smooth and continuous.
“Stopping and starting at traffic lights is a far greater interruption to a bicycle than it is to a vehicle, and therefore, paths that are really successful and have a lot of use tend to have a long, continuous, uninterrupted flow,” he said.
Accounting office manager Simon Potter, of Fletcher, rides to work in Newcastle via the shared path in Jesmond Park most days.
He was bemused by Newcastle City Council’s recent announcement that it would trial a combined pedestrian and cycle crossing at Victoria Parade in Wallsend. The dual crossing was heralded as a way to help cyclists ride from Elermore Vale to the Jesmond Park cycleway, but he said that path would soon be cut by the new state government bypass.
He anticipates his commute would take an extra 5-to-10 minutes if the current plan for the bypass goes ahead.
“I don’t know how many cycles of lights I’ll have to use to get across about five lanes of traffic,” he said.
“I think people will get sick and tired of using the lights and just go across the road, which is pretty dangerous.”
Ben Ewald, who represents Newcastle Cycleways Movement on the council’s cycling strategy committee, agreed.
“I think what they’ve proposed is quite dangerous, because it involves pedestrians and cyclists crossing what look like freeway ramps,” he said.
“Motorists who come onto a freeway ramp do kind of accelerate in and don’t expect to have to stop for pedestrians.”
He thinks a tunnel beneath the bypass would be a safer, more effective option.
Roads and Maritime Services will consider feedback on the bypass until June 9.