Inner West Council set up a Bicycle Working Group, where cycling groups and residents can meet to discuss cycling policy and issues. It has met roughly every 4 months. Agendas and minutes are on the Council website, search for Bicycle Working Group.
The meeting on March 10, 2022, discussed a first draft of Council’s Bicycle Strategy and Action Plan. Notes of the meeting by Neil Tonkin are here.
The draft Strategy was approved by Council for public exhibition on the 24 October 2022. The Strategywas adopted in 2023 and is on the Council website.
All in all, IWBC believes the document is a good Strategy, but the Action part is going to be the hardest- actually selecting the Strategic Routes from possibilities that are in the Map (fig 1), and getting them approved (can be the most time consuming part, consultation is needed and often a lot of resident opposition to overcome), designed and funded and then implemented. Funding applications must be in before November each year for State Government to assess them in its yearly budget cycle.
Note that the Strategic Routes shown (pale blue) are not a complete network, but a new selection of cycleway possibilities that Council thinks is achievable. These will have to be extended and connected up with more, as Council gains experience and confidence in design and construction, but also in dragging the public along with it. There is bound to be opposition to the fairly radical (in some minds anyway) idea of bike lanes or paths along streets like Marion or Balmain Rd.
As of February 2025, the Bike Strategy has not been updated but a consultant appointed by Council, Dick van den Dool, a well known expert on bike planning, and member of Bike East, is soon to report on a priority list of new cycleways.