Segways on the footpaths.

It's really funny that now that I'm working with heavy vehicles and dealing everyday with road access to some of the largest vehicles in Australia like ABB quads, the smallest of transportation vehicles caught my attention.

I am talking about Segways in Brisbane and electric bikes/scooters in the Gold Coast.  Just recently Queensland government announced that from 1 August 2013, approved Personal Mobility Devices (PMD) can be used on road related areas such as footpaths, bike paths and shared paths. At the moment Segway is the only PMD that has been approved but other similar devices like gyro-stabilised electric unicycles can be approved and until then can only be operated on private property.

There are certain conditions under which Segways are allowed to operate in Queensland. Those include among others the use of helmet (no surprises there), give way to pedestrians and having a warning device as a bell or horn. There is a speed restriction of 12km/h and you shouldn't be driving past a "PMD prohibited" sign.

Queensland police has adopted Segways on a 3 month trial for use on Brisbane's South Bank and Cairn's Esplanade. Officers are actually allowed to reach 20k/h when chasing a bad guy.

This whole PMD issue is not really new to Qld and Australia since mobility scooters, motorised disability wheelchairs and electric bicycles were allowed to travel on road and on the footpath for quite some time now. These vehicles need to achieve specific performance based standards and are limited to 200 Watt of power where the new PMD's don't have that limit. Segway seems to have far more power than that.

Other countries around the world allow Segways on the streets and footpaths under various conditions and contrary to the urban myth the inventor of Segway didn't die riding one of his inventions. 

And then, the other day while driving back from the beach at Surfers Paradise I saw a bunch of teenagers lane filtering and even moving from the pavement to the footpath on electric scooters. Those vehicles looked a lot like regular scooters although I noticed that they had pedals. It appears that they are available for hire without a drivers licence and they have less than 200 Watts of power.

They reminded me of my first vehicle the Honda Camino which I used to drive to school everyday between the ages of 16 and 17 back in Kavala Greece before I replaced it with the at the time very popular "ducks" Yamaha Townmate. They both had 50cc petrol engines and you needed a special drivers license issued by Greek Police to drive them.

 
As I said in an older blog post, I believe that scooters and even Personal Mobility Devices can provide better alternatives to urban travel than the car. And while I don't think that we will see a lot of Segways in the next years travelling on our footpaths it is certainly an idea worth exploring.  

Motorcycle lane filtering.

I was reading in the news the other day that Transport for New South Wales  is trialling motorcycle lane filtering. Motorcycles will be allowed to lane filter between stationary vehicles at intersections from 1 March to 30 April 2013 as part of an Australian-first trial in Sydney. I guess that most people are not familiar with this term lane filtering or lane splitting and probably that applies to some traffic engineer and transport planners from other countries. But in Australia it is illegal for motorcycles or even bicycles to drive between stationary vehicles, for example at a red traffic light.

As  Transport for NSW website explains:

Motorcycle lane filtering includes:

• Motorcycles moving between stationary vehicles.
• Motorcycles travelling within the lane, on the lane line and/or into the adjacent lane when filtering.

This trial is for a two month period at a set area in Sydney CBD and it comes with certain conditions, mainly that motorcyclists are not allowed to travel through moving traffic (lane splitting) and that riders must not filter in ‘bus only’ lanes.

The road rules that are used to prohibit lane filtering and don't apply for this trial period and are the same also in Queensland are:

• Drivers/riders on a multi-lane road must travel entirely within a single lane (rule 146a) 
• Drivers/riders must travel within a single line of traffic on a road without marked lanes (rule 146b)
• Drivers/riders on a multi-lane road must not move from one marked lane into another marked lane by crossing a continuous line separating the lanes (rule 147)

There are motorcycle websites that claim that actually lane filtering is not illegal when is done safely. They claim that there is no specific road rules that cover this and no rule that specifically uses the terminology “lane splitting” or “filtering”.

Reading this news story I remember how strange it seemed to me when I first came from Greece the sight of motorcycles waiting in the traffic light queue in the same way as cars.

The norm when driving a motorcycle or a motorbike in Athens or any other place in Greece is that you drive in the space between the traffic lanes when you reach a queue at traffic lights.
 

Athens, Greece

Athens, Greece

 And it seems that this practice is quite common in other parts of the world as well.

Ho Chi Minh City, VIetnam

Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia

Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

And I can understand why. First of all it helps motorcycle drivers reduce their traveling time quite significantly in the city centers, especially during peak traffic periods. In doing that, it gives drivers an incentive to prefer a motorcycle or a motorbike over of their car. That means less cars in the roads, less congestion, less air pollution and even less noise.It also means less need for on-street parking as in one car parking space you can feet more than one motorcycles especially when you are thinking and designing smartly as we try to do in Brisbane. Motorcycles can fit in places that cars don't like under motorway on ramps.


It seems to me that this is an issue that we definitely need more research. Is it safe to filter or there are too many dooring accidents? Does lane filtering prevents serious rear end crashes at traffic lights? Is lane filtering another reason for road rage as some drivers will look at this as queue jumping or they would be glad cause this probably would save them time from waiting at another red?  And how much pedestrians may be affected from motorcycle lane splitting? Unfortunately there isn't enough generally accepted research on this issue and let's hope this Sydney two month trial can shed some light.