JesseHyped for 9 hours of people telling the City Of Melbourne that we want them to restore the bike lane budget and build the Flinders St bike lane.
We're 4 hours in to the council meeting and many interesting things have happened.
A councillor asked a few questions of a council officer responsible for the budget that seems to clarify that the bicycle infrastructure budget is going to be the same and many bicycle projects are still planned. So I'm hopeful that the draft budget was just badly written and badly communicated.
There isn't an annual plan to go alongside the budget so this contributed to the confusion.
We've finally gotten to the speakers about bicycle infrastructure.
It's been confirmed multiple times by the meeting that the bicycle infrastructure budget will be $3.6m in the 2025/2026 budget which is great but the miscommunication has wasted a lot of people's time.
Woo! Alison McCormack the CEO of BicycleNetwork is speaking.
She's been here all night and holding the council to account.
Nik Dow from Bike Melbourne has pointed out that the budget doesn't deliver any additional bike lanes, and the money allocated is only being spent on reconfiguring existing bike lanes. "A very clever budget..." he said
It's really late now, so many of the people that were going to talk haven't been able to speak. But it's a bit funny that the mayor has to call out ~160 names to see who is still here.
There are still ~30 people in the meeting that are waiting to speak.
Next up is Barrack who is 17yrs old. He's lived here all his life and rides a bike and wants protected bike lanes and protected bike intersections.
James Garrick chairman of BicycleNetwork is speaking. He's speaking about how the BicycleNetwork has lots of friends and they don't want to have to do a 3yr campaign against the councilors that have cut the bicycle budget.
Nice!
Nice!
Next up is Chris, an 82yr old guy that walks and rides in Melbourne and wants protected bike lanes. He came in at 9pm so he's still been waiting for 1.5hrs to speak. He wants the Flinders St bike lanes and Melbourne to follow international standards in safe bicycle infrastructure.
Next up is a young women that has had a crash on a bicycle in Melbourne and wants protected bike lanes.
We're now 5 hours in and Greg is up to speak, he rides his bike to Carlton for work, has to get up early tomorrow and wants at least $5m/yr in the budget for safe bikes lanes because we can do more than the bare minimum.
Next up, Peter McLean from BicycleNSW is speaking about delivery riders needing protected bicycle infrastructure.
Next up, Casper says cutting bike budgets punishes people that are doing the right thing.
Next up, Sandra is retired and has retired her car and got an e-bike. She's a 'strong and fearless' rider but she doesn't think others should have to be. She comes in to the city via Dynon Rd and she's concerned there isn't enough bicycle infrastructure in the north of Melbourne.
She loves her bike because it's fast, direct and flexible.
She loves her bike because it's fast, direct and flexible.
Next up, Muriel is an elderly women from the west. She walked 12km today for the Walk for Truth and she's been here for almost 6 hours.
She wants safe, well lit bike paths.
She used to ride her bike to donate blood, until she got knocked off her bike.
Next up, Charlotte is the last speaker. She has been cycling 10km in to work in the city for a decade. She doesn't have a car. When she gets to the city she has to cycle along Queens St which doesn't have a bicycle lane.
She just wants a safe cycle route to work.
She just wants a safe cycle route to work.
The meeting finished just before 11:30pm. The outcome is that the budget isn't going to be passed until the next meeting (Monday 30 June 2025, 5.30pm).
So there should be clarity or restoration of the bicycle budget by then. Some of the confusion/deception appears to be the City of Melbourne is trying to count Metro Tunnel bike lane(Franklin St) spend as part of their spend but that's not part of their budget.
This means there is a cut to the bicycle budget, but it won't look like a cut since bike lanes are still being built in the City of Melbourne but not by City of Melbourne. As Nik Dow said "it's a very 'clever' budget".
This gives City of Melbourne the ability to claim they're not taking space away from cars (since that's the state government) while also claiming they're still building bike lanes (but that's also the state government).
Bicycle Network has a clear breakdown on this seemingly intentional obfuscation that the City of Melbourne council is doing with the bicycle infrastructure budget.
"One of the most frustrating aspects of this process has been the shifting narrative around how much Council is actually investing in bike infrastructure. Over recent weeks, the figure has grown – not through new budget commitments, but by creative redefinitions of what 'bike funding' means."
It looks like we mostly won!
The City of Melbourne council meeting tonight that passed the budget had an amendment to restore the budget for bicycle infrastructure adding back $4.5M over 4yrs.
This brings the spend from 2026/2027 back up to the previous amount spent in recent years.
This is still a cut in the 2025-2026 budget, and we were asking for an increase to $5m/yr but it's better the previous draft budget.
It also makes it clear that the Mayor was misrepresenting the actual spend on bicycle infrastructure in the previous draft budget.
Another amendment was to have the budget list the actual projects being delivered. This will make it easier to read the final budget and see what they're actually spending the bicycle infrastructure budget on.
