The City of Phillip have announced that, “based on feedback from our community, the Department of Transport and Planning (DTP) will be making some changes to the pop-up bike lanes they installed in Port Phillip last year.  Starting from next month, the DTP will be returning some roads - including Westbury Street - to their original configurations and removing trial safety treatments such as speed humps, concrete blocks, bollards and yellow lines”.

Unfortunately, the DTP has pulled rank on the council by claiming that as these roads are gazetted state roads, it has the power to do as it wishes – so much for the heavily touted “partnership approach” that the DOTP was taking with council.

We note that this is unacceptable as this is the roadway where many accidents have occurred – especially at the Glenhuntly Road intersection.

Residents of Port Phillip (ROPP) will continue to advocate for this removal, along with the Park Street, South Melbourne infrastructure that leads to a peak hour jam going all the way back to Clarendon Street.

The removal of most of the pop-up bike lanes is due to the hard work of many people who:

• Attended an initial residents meeting and volunteered to distribute for flyers – thank you to those who attended and printed/distributed flyers.
• Thank you to those who donated specifically to the campaign.
• Influenced and lobbied relevant state (Martin Foley, Sam Hibbins and Nina Taylor) and federal (Josh Burns) politicians – especially by Jan Talacko, Mark Naughton and Westbury Street residents (Una Steele, Adam Blandford, Peter Krashow, Brendan Perera).
• Spoke at several council meetings and information sessions.
• Commissioned and funded the Traffix Group (non-ROPP member) to produce the important and independent report highlighting the poor design and dangerousness of specific infrastructure – this was led by Mark Naughton and Jan Talacko; and
• Ultimately influenced Port Phillip councillors to vote seven to one in December 2022 for COPP to write to the DOT, requesting removal of the infrastructure.

This was clearly a combined community effort, with expense, time and physical effort invested by those parties named above and many others over the past 12 months.

ROPP congratulates everyone who participated in this campaign – members and non-members alike. 

We of course now await the physical removal of the infrastructure which we will continue to monitor.