Concrete bollards on Hobart’s Collins Street bike lane are causing serious injuries to cyclists, pedestrians and elderly people according to a city councillor, with calls growing for the barriers to be removed.
Councillor Louise Elliot said she had received multiple reports of people being hurt by the bollards, including an elderly woman who suffered serious lacerations and a man in his 40s who needed his elbow pinned and plated after a fall.
“These are serious injuries,” she told Pulse.
Eliott said medical professionals in the area had contacted her with concerns that older people were particularly at risk.
She said a local doctor had told her he was “really worried that older people can “break a bone” and “decline really fast” as a result.
The council has received seven reports of injuries from the bollards, while Eliott said she had received four more independently.
“I hypothesise that more people have been hurt now after the installations than were definitely being hurt beforehand,” she said.
She called for the bollards to be replaced immediately with flexible, more visible infrastructure and said the next council should reconsider the entire layout.
Fellow councillor Ryan Posselt, who chairs the region’s peak cycling body and works as a paramedic, also raised public concerns about the bollards last week.
He told Pulse the rigid concrete was “enough to throw you over the handlebars” and had already broken a cyclist’s arm.
He said off-the-shelf separators with a lower profile and closer-set poles were available and would be more visible and more effective at keeping vehicles out of the lane.
“I’m not really sure why they weren’t used in the original design,” he said.
Posselt said he was still a strong supporter of the two-year trial, which recently hit its halfway mark, but said there “are elements that need to be adjusted”.
The two-year Collins Street trial has been contentious since approval, removing dozens of car parking spaces between Molle and Murray streets.
Speaking at the halfway mark in June, outgoing Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds said it is “not a set-and-forget project” and council has “already made changes in response to feedback”.
“Community feedback is essential in helping us understand what’s working, what’s not and how we can shape the future of Collins Street,” she said.
