Westbury Road Launceston upgrade with Bike Path

[Tornado]

My old home of Lonny is to receive some infrastructure upgrades on Westbury road and surrounds to the tune of $400k or so. Many locals seem a bit upset about the cycling lane section and are obviously leaving many negative comments, but I'm sure as part of a bigger picture it may not all be bad.

Link to Article

[thecaptn]

Awesome, I'm moving from a council which wants to wreck it's existing bike lanes to a council which is putting new ones in. One negative though I notice from the comments that they still have knob-heads down there

[Tornado]

Yeah. I left when I was 21 to move to the West. We have our fair share of knobs here but much better facilities. Tassie has some great places to ride. Shame I wasn't more into it when I was there.

[RonK]

I recall riding that section when I toured in '09. It's bloody long slog up that hill from the city.

[thecaptn]

I love the riding in Tassie generally but must admit that I'm intimidated by Lonny itself. Not just the hills but the roads and traffic in general. I may end up being one of those people who drive to the places they ride. I hope not because I was looking forward to commuting everywhere. Only time will tell....

[Tornado]

If you know your way around you could probably devise some good back street routes but in doing so give yourself some extra challenges hills wise. Probably a lot of extra distance too. Depends where you are and where you need to get. Some bits of Lonny are a breeze. Others are terrible.

Next time I go back I need to look at it from a cyclists perspective a bit more and less so as a driver. I've been away for 14 years and when I go back I see that not much changes. Love the place but I don't know if I could live there again. A house down on the east coast in a quiet town could do me though in retirement.

[thecaptn]

We're only planning to rent in Lonny for a couple of years and then buy somewhere quiet once we've worked out where that might be. Probably in or around a town like Deloraine, Sheffield or Lilydale, somewhere with quiet roads and nice scenery.

[Tornado]

Sheffield should be nice to kick off from to ride up to Cradle Mountain if you like going up!

[thecaptn]

It's one of the first rides I plan to do once we've moved!

[rangersac]

Avoid the 8:15-9:00am, and 4:45- 5:30pm periods and Lonnie is just fine. Even then most of the traffic is restricted to the central and nearby surrounds, and there are alternative routes to avoid the mayhem. The annoying part is if you want to get pretty much anywhere other than up the Tamar, it's a climb to get out. Even so, most of the major routes out have shoulders to get off the road.

[RonK]

We're only planning to rent in Lonny for a couple of years and then buy somewhere quiet once we've worked out where that might be. Probably in or around a town like Deloraine, Sheffield or Lilydale, somewhere with quiet roads and nice scenery.

Don't overlook Westbury, it's a lovely town and housing is affordable.

[thecaptn]

We're only planning to rent in Lonny for a couple of years and then buy somewhere quiet once we've worked out where that might be. Probably in or around a town like Deloraine, Sheffield or Lilydale, somewhere with quiet roads and nice scenery.

Don't overlook Westbury, it's a lovely town and housing is affordable.

Yes Westbury is very nice, we looked at the old Anglican church's vicar's residence by the village green, it was for sale a while ago. Not far from one of the original coach houses which has a wood fired bakery that still operates. Apparently Westbury is the only town in Australia which has a common. Doesn't have a supermarket though unfortunately.

[RonK]

We're only planning to rent in Lonny for a couple of years and then buy somewhere quiet once we've worked out where that might be. Probably in or around a town like Deloraine, Sheffield or Lilydale, somewhere with quiet roads and nice scenery.

Don't overlook Westbury, it's a lovely town and housing is affordable.

Yes Westbury is very nice, we looked at the old Anglican church's vicar's residence by the village green, it was for sale a while ago. Not far from one of the original coach houses which has a wood fired bakery that still operates. Apparently Westbury is the only town in Australia which has a common. Doesn't have a supermarket though unfortunately.

It does have an IGA. And only 16km to Deloraine.
I met a traveller at Gowrie Park who was adamant that Latrobe was the nicest place to live, but I've never been there.
I did think Longford was very nice, but my choice would be Swansea or Cygnet.

[thecaptn]

I didn't think much of Latrobe, reminded me of an outer suburb of Melbourne. I like Longford too, good cycling around there. Never been to Swansea, Cygnet is nice yes, Originally we were looking at property around Huonville but then discovered Deloraine while on tour and fell in love with the North. There isn't any part of the place that I don't like really except for Bronte Park.

[mikgit]

It's interesting, if I understand the map provided, it seems they are putting in a bike lane at the point you don't need one... I ride that road a bit, and find the top bit to be fine (they could trim the bushes jsut out of shot of the picture though)... but after riding up a few times, I now go up wellington st, then across normanston, then onto westbury road. Find the traffic fine, but the lower section is pretty bad, with all the corners etc(hence going normanston).

[thecaptn]

I couldn't work out the map at all, it looked to me like they were only putting a bike lane on one side? I actually don't know the road and although I prefer to avoid saying anything negative about this sort of enterprise it appears to me that bike lanes must be designed by engineers without input from actual cyclists. I can say from experience that bad infrastructure isn't necessarily better than no infrastructure, I just wish that end users could be part of the development process.

[mikgit]

jsut looking at the map...i think it starts from the downhill part of the photo and goes up over the bridge into the shopping center...but could be completely wrong. Once you get past the bidge its all wide and happy place right now...

[Shred11]

The original story appears to be a beat up by The Exaggerator. It seems calculated to incite ill feeling towards cyclists. The Launceston Council posted the following to its FaceBook page:

https://www.facebook.com/CityofLauncest ... 0001064509

In short, the council is spending $400,000 to re-seal the road, widening it and turning the overtaking lane in to a right turn lane for cars. The portion of the budget for constructing the bike lane is $10,000 - i.e. 2.5% of the project's budget.