Adelaide Scraps Plans for Critical Bikeway

By Phil Latz | 7th April 2021 |

This map shows the proposed route for the now abandoned East West Bikeway which would have created the first separated link across the city centre.

Adelaide, South Australia

Adelaide City Council has abandoned plans to spend $5.8m on a new east-west city bikeway.

Elected members ended four years of controversy by voting 8-3 on Monday night 22^nd March 2021 against a bikeway from West Terrace to Hutt Street up Franklin Street, into Gawler Place and onto Wakefield Street.

Staff proposed the dog-leg design late last year as a compromise following threats by property owners on Flinders Street to sue the council if they lost street carparks.

The council’s decision means a $3 million State Government grant towards the bike lane must be returned to the Department for Infrastructure and Transport.

Adelaide Lord Mayor Sandy Verschoor said encouraging more cycling was a vital part of ‘integrated transport’.

“We are a capital city and I find it incredible that, in 2021, we cannot deliver a separated bikeway,” she said. “Whether we do it now, or in five years, it is the way of the future.”

You can read comments about this decision in our Opinion section here.

This article was first published in the Adelaide Advertiser.