Cousin Balki's Melbourne Rant Thread.

ALWAYS check for trams.
I haven’t tried the roundabout yet, but it was never bad heading south into the city, but coming out it was horrible.

while green light does mean it’s safe to proceed, if it’s a fresh green (just changed from red) i always still have a look no matter what the intersection to make sure nothing is coming thru late/illegally.

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ok, perhaps i need to clarify what i mean by “checking”.

i always check (they weigh as much as 30 rhinos on a skateboard don’t ya know!), i more meant that if a tram is rumbling through the intersection (in the middle bit next to the flags) and we get a green, the tram is going to stop, unlike in the past where they carry on through ringing their bell like mad and trying not to hit all the fuckwits in cars that gun it through anyway.

Yeah, but then you just get held up at the first red light. Then if you smash it to the next light (heading to Peel) you’ll get there before it changes to green too.

One thing it has seemed to fix is cars entering from the middle of Royal Pde are no longer trying to merge over into my lane. This happened all too frequently before the upgrade, and many a car got a thump in the passenger side door from yours truly, (usually met with a confused look from the driver saying, “what did I do?”)

Never seen a tram kickflip, though.

that would be the logical assumption, but how often do you see a tram take off on a yellow or just before the tram light goes off.

without sitting down one lunch and watching the sequences (i might do this today) i thought that the trams would be fast-tracked thru the roundabout, so as to not leave them sitting in the middle waiting.

i still think i’d rather smash through and stop than hug the left hand side then wait for the green man. at that time of the morning i reckon the lights are still going to favour traffic over pedestrians. if traffic’s backed up there’s always the opportunity to sneak to the front. one thing to remember too, if you’re heading south onto peel st, don’t bother with the green bike lane there either, too many dickheads cut that corner, bike lane or no bike lane :frowning:

drivers have been banned from attempting them since the great tram kickflip tragedy of 1901…

Many bicycles on St. Kilda rd this morning. Its going to be bedlam come summer time. People need to chill the fuck out.

I was mentioning this to a friend last night as we were riding back into the city from St. Kilda around 9ish last night.
It’s a nice ride but we talked about what it would be like when it’s packed full of commuters, pretty bad I’d reckon.

Im all for lots of bikes, but there was some A-grade fuckwittery on display today.

That’s what I mean, more bikes, unfortunatley more fucktards

Go faster than the fuckwits, that’s why we’re bike nerds!

Docklands has been developed to be bicycle friendly yet new roads have been made with cobbled bluestone.

:rolleyes:

the europeans have been riding on cobbles for eons. they even race along the stuff.

if the world’s most bike friendly cities/countries can do it, we can too. just get some 45’s and fenders and you won’t even notice. they’re probably smoother overall than the pot-hole riddled streets we currently ride on.

Those surfaces are far more even than the bluestone bricks used in Melbourne.

It’s an outdated type of road surfacing and should not have been used for newly developed roads, especially in an area that is focussed on providing good bicycle-riding infrastructure like Docklands.

The specific location in Docklands is at the T-sections of Bourke Street and Merchant Street; Import Lane. Utterly pathetic. I suggest you ride west on Bourke and take a left onto Merchant Street for a better understanding.

I shall inspect tonight on my horse and buggy.

will do so tonite on the still muddied cx bike.

I’m working on a project in the Docklands at the moment, and let me tell you, Melbourne City Council LOVES bluestone.

Too right they do! I do 3d architectural visualisations for heaps of big projects in Melbourne and whenever we’re not sure about a material we just slap a bluestone texture on and everyone’s happy.

if only the bluestone was black we’d have a totally uniform city