People who use Kent St and the PA Hospital Bikeway to ride between Annerley Rd, Annerley/Dutton Park and O’Keefe St, Woolloongabba have experienced 6 years of disruption as construction work on Cross River Rail has impacted Kent St. Now that Dutton Park Station has fully re-opened, the bikeway connection at Kent St is in its final form, and we’re incredibly disappointed with just how poor that form is.

We think it’s fair to say that the route along Kent St wasn’t the most coherent prior to 2020, but somehow after 6 years of major construction work, the final outcome is even worse!

Brisbane South BUG have written to the Department of Transport and Main Roads (TMR), the Cross River Rail Construction Authority and Transport Minister Brent Mickelberg MP about this fiasco. They’ve also met with Gabba Ward Councillor Trina Massey, who is investigating what can be done from her limited ward budget to improve safety here. (To be fair, this mess was not of Council’s making, and we don’t think it should be the responsibility of an individual Councillor to resolve it.)

It’s difficult to describe all the issues amongst this mess, but a few of the key problems are:

• The transition from the PA Hospital Bikeway to the road at Kent St turns sharply, and has poor visibility for anyone heading north.
• Other ramps between the road and footpaths are angled incorrectly, in strange locations, or are not wide enough for shared access.
• It’s unclear how the whole area is to work for bicycle or scooter riders. Regular riders are developing their own strategies to muddle through, but for anyone new to the area it’s confusing.
• We can’t see any logical reason for differing levels of the path at the southern end of Kent St which limit the usable width of the footpath there. Yellow paint and bollards shouldn’t be necessary to mark the hazard!
• There is no traffic calming for vehicles turning into Cornwall St and Kent St (where bike riders are being funnelled to cross the road) which makes it unsafe for bike riders to cross at this location.

Although bike traffic on Kent St can be expected to reduce when the Yamma Bridge finally opens (and no, we still don’t have clarity on when that will be), it will still remain an important route – particularly for people riding from Annerley, Fairfield, and the southern suburbs. There’s really no excuse for a major public transport project to leave such a mess even on a minor bike route.