Australia

Because so many Australian drivers are actively hostile to cyclists.

1. Better cycling infrastructure. Yeah, no shit. We need more paths, more direct paths, and more connected paths. You should be able to go anywhere you want using a route that it at least as direct as the most direct driving route, by bike, without ever sharing a road with cars above 30 km/h, and with a minimal number of road crossings where the cars get priority.
2. Use AI to identify where cycling infrastructure needs to go. 🙄 Or you could just ask cyclists. We've got no shortage of ideas of places that are severely lacking already. Maybe the AI could be useful once most of the basic network is done, but not today.
3. Improve transport modelling to include cycling. Yes! Add in induced demand effects on infrastructure for cycling, public transport, and cars. Use models that understand traffic evaporation when reducing road widths or adding modal filters. Our transport engineers are currently woefully behind the times.
4. Politicians need to actually care about cycling. Yeah, no shit.
5. Make active transport funding a priority. Yup. Our councillors love to harp on about how they spent X amount on cycling infrastructure, but they never put that in context of how much is spent on roads. But also, let's make sure that money goes where it's most useful. Spending billions building one green bridge is great, but is still much less useful than building many kilometres of good separated bikeway for the same price. (The real answer is to do both!)
6. Recognise the health benefits of cycling. Yes, but this isn't really an actionable item. It's just more reason to do the above items, particularly pointing to 4.

I remember reading on the Conversation years ago one problem is we've been trained to see everyone on the road as equal. That's not the case, someone in a car is surrounded by steel in a one tonne machine that can go 100km/h, but they're the one missing out when stuck behind a cyclist or a cycle lane is implemented. Spaces need to be planned with a focus on the movement of people first, then cars.

We also need more complete cycling infrastructure. You look at the cycle lanes on maps and the paths look like a minecraft village. They're disconnected and don't link up anywhere. Also, a metre of green paint at the edge of a three lane road where the speed limit is 80km/h is not cycling infrastructure.

I used to ride the 33kms into the city for work, but that's because I like cycling and got all the gear for it. The ride was either on paths or quiet roads but more could be done to link up sections and make the ride faster.

There was another article about the 'cycling donut' effect in Melbourne where people close to the CBD could walk or take trams, further out people rode because it was that sweet spot of a distance, and beyond that people drove or took public transport because everything was too far away.

Australia is a perfect candidate for cycling infrastructure because our cities are mostly flat, it never gets as cold as it does in Europe or NA, and the heat is generally more of a dry heat which can be avoided with some shade and a breeze. Our cities should be designed around 3-speed town bikes instead of cars.

The heat in qld. The humidity in summer cannot be understated.

Reforming mandatory helmet laws, by either abolishing them altogether or making them applicable only on busy roads, would help. The laws deter mass uptake of cycling by framing getting on a bike as a dangerous extreme sport rather than a form of active mobility. The fact that they are applied to advertising as well, with tourism ads for Amsterdam having helmets photoshopped onto all the cyclists, further reinforces this framing and deters casual cyclists.

I live 42 km from work, and I have school drop off's and pickups on the way. I can't live where I work, and the kids education opportunities means I can't have them educated where Iive.

Bikes and public transport are welcome but won't help my situation.

I hadn’t ridden properly for a couple of decades, then after Covid inherited a bike and decided to ride on some bike tracks. Had a great time and now I try to ride anything 10km and under.

It took a little while to get used to riding on roads, but I’ve overcome that.

Also, I’ve noticed that there are lots of great bike tracks but even more missing links to join them all together.

Bicycle freeways, put them in every city over 100k pop.

So many reasons. Not everyone lives close enough to the city. Not everyone wants to ride a bike. Not everyone has showers available at their work. Not everyone would feel safe riding a bike, especially women. Then there's the big one - the weather.

In many countries with high numbers of cyclers an adult can jump on a bike and cycle along the footpath without a helmet. In Australia you can be fined over $400!

The two main reasons stopping me are lack of infrastructure (I haven't ridden a bike in ages and there's no way I'm going on a road with any traffic lol), and climate (Perth is often hot as hell, or rainy, neither of which is great unless you have a shower at work).

Our towns and cities are largely lacking the medium density mixed use neighbourhoods that make it nice to cycle. We can fix it, but it’s going to take time.