Pop-up bike lanes mooted for Adelaide streets
Adelaide City Council is looking at launching pop-up bike lanes made from an unusual mix of barrier materials as bike sales soar by 136 per cent amid the fuel crisis.
Adelaide City Councillors are looking at the feasibility of introducing pop-up bike lanes in the CBD at their meeting on Tuesday night in a bid to support fuel-free transportation in the midst of the current fuel crisis.
Adelaide Councillor Eleanor Freeman is introducing the plan saying the local community has pushed for pop-up lanes in the city “again and again” that are typically made from plastic bollards, rubber kerbing, traffic cones or temporary paintwork.
Her motion asks the council to investigate the feasibility of temporary bikeway infrastructure on key network routes, secure bicycle parking in strategic locations, e-bike charging facilities and an improved cycling network.
“Council doesn’t actually have a strategy about pop-up bike lanes. The idea was floated during COVID, but it never eventuated,” Freeman said.
“We find ourselves now in another crisis where people are changing their travel behaviour, but council doesn’t have a plan of how to respond to that.
“Tonight’s motion is an assessment of what they’d look like, where they would go, when they’d be delivered, and how much it would cost.”
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The proposal comes as fuel prices soar across the country amid Middle East conflict, with many South Australians looking to alternative transportation methods.
National bike retailer 99 Bikes reported a 136 per cent surge in bike and e-bike sales in March, with the introduction of new lanes tipped to further encourage bike use.
Pop-up bike lanes have been trialled in other major Australian cities, with Sydney introducing the lanes during the COVID-19 pandemic to give inner-city commuters a travel alternative with reduced public transport – and have stayed in use six years later.
Freeman said Peacock Road, which connects King William Street to King William Road, is one of the key networks that would benefit from the lanes.
“If you ride on that bike way it’s entirely separated from traffic the whole way, and then suddenly you’re on a bike lane next to traffic when you get to the city. So that’s a huge deterrent for people,” she said.
“People will always have this fear that cycling infrastructure takes away something else that’s in the road environment, but that’s not necessarily the case.
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“We have really wide roads in Adelaide compared to other capital cities. There is so much opportunity for everyone to fit safely, we just need to spend the time working out what that looks like and how to do it.”
She told InDaily that a lack of safe bike parking was another issue to be raised in the meeting.
“I keep hearing from people that have huge e-bikes that they don’t have anywhere to park them, and they get stolen or vandalised.”
“Even if that was something that council agreed to look at immediately, that would make a big difference.”
Bike SA’s business services manager Bailey Underwood also backed the motion and said it would promote “safe” bike travel for CBD workers.
“The temporary protected space in the form of a pop-up cycleway gives people who otherwise may not feel confident or safe cycling an opportunity to come into the city and feel safe while doing so,” Underwood said.
“The important part is that they’re flexible by design, so that means the infrastructure can be tweaked and refined over time to get towards an optimised outcome.
“It’s a positive living measure, it’s a safety measure, and it’s about providing people more choice.”
The motion requests that Adelaide City Council administrators present a report to councillors by September 2026 to outline proposed scope, locations, costs, timeframes and impact.
Should the motion be approved, the council administration would investigate options for pop-up cycle routes to be implemented as soon as practicable in 2026/27. A trial would then be implemented to “align with either Biketober 2026 or Tour Down Under 2027” according to council.
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