Austroads finally notices motorcycles.

A report from Guy Stanford of the NSWMCC. As he says in his conclusion,
this is a step forward for bikes, as being seen as a separate user class
is vital for getting bike-specific changes to roads and laws.

It does mean that people have got to get out and ride dammit!

===============

Yesterday I attended the meeting of the National Road Safety Strategy Panel.

The following project is now being taken up by AUSTROADS

Title: A reliable, low-cost travel exposure index plus
classification of motorcycles as a distinct vehicle class
(RS.SS.N.550)

Project Number: SS1082

Purpose: To develop indices for urban and rural travel volume
and speed distribution which can routinely be calculated from
existing data sources and examine the feasibility of including
motorcycles as a vehicle class within this system.

Provider: ARRB

Current Status: July 2004: The Qld Main Roads Kistler traffic
logging equipment failed and is not likely to be back in action
before September - one part of the study is to determine how
well motorcycles can be detected by the equipment based on
their wheelbase and weight, and to identify what sort of vehicle
trigger false positives. The other part of the study the low
cost exposure measure - is not dependent on the outcome of this
part of the study, but it is convenient to deal with both aspects
as a package so not much work has been done to date. Variation
being developed with new schedule. Final report due May 2005.


What does this mean?

In transport and planning, motorcycles have been invisible to public
policy and hence have been left out of virtually ALL policies regarding
road allocation and parking. Any way of fitting motorcycles into the
existing policies has been through the constant efforts of riders in
the past, to extract concessions. The authorities think they are doing
us a favour by allowing us into their policy area and have never been
terribly co-operative, because they didn't have to be. We just didn't
exist on their paperwork.

This project should lead to structural change, as it will require
separate management of motorcycles in transport, instead of the current
"afterthought" process, we we get thrown a few crumbs from time to time.

This is a pleasing outcome and follows on very quickly from the Australian
Roads Foundation workshop last week, where this shortcoming was pointed
out. The addition of motorcycles as a separate road user class has
been added in to this project and we can applaud the authorities for
the equity granted.

It will take some time yet to achieve implementation in policy, but we
are on the right track and they can now see us coming.

Motorcycle Awareness programs have moved ahead one step.

Guy
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