Back in early March, I headed over to Perth for a long weekend to visit my daughter. It was the first time I’d ever visited this city, so I tried to also to catch a glimpse of some of the cycling infrastructure while I was there.
Perth is a fairly sprawling city of roughly 2 million people nestled on the western Australian coast and around the Swan River estuary. Like many places in Australia, cycling is not a high priority mode of transport for many, although typically 15-20% of people there do report cycling at least once a week in Perth.
The bulk of these trips are recreational in nature though, belying the common view across the ditch it seems that cycling is more of a pastime or sporting activity than a utility transport one.
This focus on recreational riding is evident from the many pathways and trails that run along the beach and river fronts around Perth. As I’ve seen elsewhere in Australia, there tends to be a heavy use of markings and signs to make clear to people how to interact on these (often) shared paths.
Sometimes, walking and cycling will be clearly separated, with generous space for each party.
Bollards also get regular use to manage speeds along pathways, although even some of these can be a tad tight…
On-road cycling can be more of a challenge, particularly given Australia’s intriguing propensity to make extensive use of 60 km/h roads in urban areas. Painted cycle lanes can only help you so much… In the rural 70-100 km/h roads between urban centres, shoulders were a bit sporadic, so kudos to the many brave riders I observed going along these routes.
Central Perth did at least have the occasional separated cycleways, but they were few and far between…
Down in Fremantle, the town centre was a bit more welcoming for cycling, with a 30km/h speed limit and their equivalent of “sharrows” for sharing the traffic lanes.
The only time I actually got out on a bike myself was during our day-trip over to Rottnest Island where we hired some bikes to cruise around the beaches and other attractions.
With the exception of a shuttle bus, most of the roads around the island are free of motor vehicles, making it a very relaxing experience for a lot of people to bike around.
Away from the roads, there were even a couple of nice pathways connecting some of the beaches too…
Speaking of hiring bikes, the other place I spotted with bike rental facilities was in Kings Park and Botanic Garden, which had a fairly comprehensive cycle hire facility by the car park (and some nice pathways around the gardens).
Here are a few more photos I snapped in my travels around the city:
Overall, Perth is an interesting mix of nice cycling facilities off-road (albeit with overzealous path controls) but often not much fun on-road when mixing with heavy or fast traffic. It was telling in fact that the most cycling was to be found on the relatively traffic-free roads around Rottnest Island – a pointer for the way forward elsewhere perhaps…
Have you cycled around Perth? What did you think?