00:00Ashley Goldstraw gets around Geelong by bike, but his regular commute isn't always safe.
00:08I seem to have an incident probably at least once a week just riding around town.
00:14Most days Mr Goldstraw uses this section of Geelong's new southern bike link.
00:19The two kilometre, two million dollar bike lane was touted as the first stage of a critical link
00:24connecting a quarter of the city's booming population with its CBD.
00:28But the city has shelved the project's second stage and now lost almost three million dollars in TAC funding.
00:35They're not willing to give up any convenience for cars or for the safety of cyclists.
00:42So rather than being anti-bike, I just think that they're anti-change.
00:47In 2022 the council voted not to award a contract for stage two,
00:52arguing the designs were unsafe and over-engineered, with a councillor saying
00:57this is our chance to put a pause on this.
00:59But it's unclear if that pause is now permanent, with a council statement confirming
01:04the city informed the Department of Transport that the project was not going ahead in March 2023,
01:10but on the other hand also saying the project hasn't been abandoned.
01:15Whatever the future of the bike lane might be, the TAC has confirmed that almost three million dollars
01:20in funding for the project has now been stripped from the council and redirected elsewhere.
01:26The move to shelve the Southern Link bike path may now put the city on a collision course with the state government.
01:32It comes just two years after five local MPs wrote a scathing letter to the city,
01:37detailing a growing lack of confidence in its ability to deliver on state-funded projects.
01:42And Geelong's state MP is once again unimpressed.
01:46The clever and creative city that cannot build a bike path,
01:51and are sending money back to government saying we don't want this money, we're not going to do it.
01:57It's pretty disgraceful really.
01:59Leaving local cyclists with little to manoeuvre.
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