Collins Street Bike Lanes Public Meeting Speech by Anna Johnston
Anna Johnston from Streets People Love Hobart speaks at the Collins Street bike lane meeting, calling for safer, more inclusive streets. She highlights the need for active transport, sustainable city design, and community-led change.
Anna Johnston from Streets People Love Hobart delivers a powerful and thoughtful speech at the public meeting on Collins Street’s bike lane project. Speaking passionately about creating safer, more inclusive, and people-friendly streets, Anna highlights the importance of active transport, sustainable city design, and community-led change.
Anna Johnston gave one of the several great speeches at the public meeting for Collins Streets' bike lanes. Watch the video and read the transcript below.
My name is Anna Johnston, I live in Lena Valley. I'm a mother, a doctor, a cyclist, and a driver, and I'm strongly in favour of this proposal. Coming back to why we want the separated cycle lanes, pedestrians and cyclists have a right to feel frightened by cars, and unfortunately, four pedestrians were killed in Tasmania last year, and almost 50 pedestrians and cyclists were seriously injured by cars.
As Neil pointed out in his excellent overview of the project, about 35% of people would like to ride a bike but they don't because of these concerns. So I think safety for all road users, not just drivers but also pedestrians and cyclists, is a key pillar of this project.
The other point is that we know that from Australian road data that the road toll actually increased and it's reached a 12-year high last year, and most of the increase across Australia was from pedestrians and cyclists being injured by cars. So they're real concerns, and we all have the right to feel safe on the streets and to get to our workplaces and to do all the things that we do safely.
This proposal forms a key pillar of people being able to get around Hobart in a safe manner. At my workplace, I see lots of doctors bringing their nurses and all sorts of people bringing their children on the back of their cargo bikes, and I'm sure you would agree with me that we want this to be a place where those children can get to their childcare or their school safely and not be knocked off their bike.
I'd also like to point out that increasingly we have all these chronic health problems which are unfortunately increasing rather than diminishing, and where we all need the opportunity to move more. So as a doctor, I see that this really promotes active transport. This promotes Hobart being a much healthier and safer city.
I'm sure others will talk about the benefits in terms of just making Collins Street a much nicer place, so I really encourage you to vote yes because I think this is a great trial and we all like to see it come to fruition soon.
