[R2U.announce] FW: Update on Majura Pines

[Adam Taylor]

Some promising news for mountain bike riders.

 

Have a good weekend all.

 

Cheers,

 

Adam

 

 

  _____  

From: Matt Swainson [mailto:swainson_matt at yahoo.co.uk] 
Sent: 4 September 2009 15:29
To: matt rossiter; Matthew Swainson; Ian.Burns at mdba.gov.au;
brendon.mulloy at defence.gov.au
Subject: Update on Majura Pines

 

Hello again cyclists,

 

Another quick update on the effort to save the Majura Pines:

 

As a result of the impressive cyclist turnout at the Majura Parkway
public meeting in July, ACT Roads (Tony Gill) and the design contractors
(SMEC) offered to meet a group of mountain bikers to discuss the issue
further.  The meeting occurred on 13 August at the ACT Roads offices in
Lyneham and went much better than we had anticipated.  In reaction to
the raft of comments made at the public meeting, ACT Roads commissioned
SMEC to produce a further two options (6 & 7) and presented these to us
at the meeting.  Both options impact the Pines to a much lesser degree
than the "preferred option" outlined in the draft EIS.  This is good.

 

Option 6 is a full Parkway sized road, which traverses the Pines much
lower than the "preferred option".  This has the advantage of no longer
bisecting the Pines - rather it removes the bottom sections nearer the
existing road.  However, this is still a significant tract of road and
will claim 100m or so of the lower single tracks (but much less than
before).  Option 6 will maintain the proposed 100kph speed limit.

 

Option 7 is essentially a duplication of the existing Majura Road and
will utilise AFP land on the opposite side to the Pines.  It will have
very little impact on the Pines at all.  Although this does seem like
the perfect option for the Pines, the road will have a reduced speed
limit to 80kph for the section that passes by the Pines, before
increasing to 100kph once again.  Aside from the AFP land use, option 7
also necessitates a set of traffic lights at the entrance to the AFP.

 

A caveat to these options is that, at this stage, we understand the AFP
has not agreed to either (Option 7 will remove some of their land and
will require lights at their entrance, instead of an off-ramp).  That
consultation is in its early stages and should remain up to ACT Roads.

 

SMEC raised the issue of offsets, to compensate for any loss of trails
in the Pines (should it come to that).  We indicated that while we would
prefer to lose no trails, we are pragmatic enough to realise this may
not be possible and would certainly consider options to develop trails
in lands adjacent to the Pines.

 

The meeting finished with an undertaking from ACT Roads that the options
6 and 7, along with the "preferred option" from the EIS will be referred
to the appropriate Ministers (Jon Stanhope and Andrew Barr as the
Minister for Planning) for consultation and a final decision in
September.  ACT Roads have also undertaken to communicate any changes to
this plan to the group of us present at the meeting.  In response, we
offered to assist ACT Roads and SMEC in any way we could with regards to
design issues related to the mountain bike trails at the Pines. 

 

Unfortunately, options 6 & 7 are not publicly available for you to view
- although we did request that they be made available. 

 

So what next? 

 

The plan from here is to write to the Ministers concerned to lobby for
Option 7; so they are aware of the strong recreational value of the
Pines, to all Canberrans, especially us Mountain Bikers.

 

Thanks again for your valuable support and comments so far.  We'll keep
you informed of progress.

 

Happy riding,

 

Ian Burns

Matt Rossiter

Matt Swainson

Brendon Mulloy

 

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