New designs for Little Bridge Street

Concept art of the Little Bridge project (via CoB)

As part of its wider revamp of the Bridge Mall area, the City of Ballarat has released some new designs for Little Bridge Street, including the bus interchange. Let's take a look, starting with the stuff I think is a bit more contentious. 

Due to a history of antisocial behaviour by a small number of people, and some fairly significant crimes committed by an even smaller number, the Little Bridge Street bus interchange has been controversial for many years. I won't go through the whole history, but suffice to say the local traders want substantial change, with some of them calling for the stop to be moved away entirely. Council and the State government don't want to move it, and are instead proposing to revamp the area to increase amenity and make it safer. 

Part of this will involve increased CCTV and lighting, which is fine by me. But they also want to change the bus shelters, which is trickier. 

Little Bridge Street Interchange in 2018

The proposal is to replace the existing two bus shelters with a single larger one at the western end. I say "existing" as the plans make reference to the two shelters, but in fact the eastern shelter has already been removed in response to outcry from local traders. For the record I think this is misguided, and I would prefer there to be plenty of shelter all the way along, for all the legitimate bus passengers who want a place to sit out of the weather. But in any case, the consolidation of the shelters is essentially a done deal, although the design of the new shelter still seems to be open for discussion. 

Frankly, I think the design of the existing shelter is great, and I would be happy if the new one had much the same built form. It's got a good roof, and walls that extend all the way up to the roof on three sides, making for excellent weather protection in the cold, wet, windy Ballarat winters (and great sun protection in summer). Making more of the walls transparent to improve visibility could be a good thing, and of course something like a lighter coat of paint could make it feel a bit less tired, but I wouldn't change anything structural. 

Shelter examples provided in the survey (via CoB)

Some of the examples shown have no walls, or walls that allow the breeze through, which to my mind would be a real step backwards for passenger comfort. There are so many examples of shitty weather protection on Melbourne station platforms in recent years, and indeed at the recent bus interchange at Ballarat Station, where the angle of roofs and/or the lack of solid walls means the 'shelters' provide minimal actual shelter from the rain. I don't want that to happen here. 

My big fear is that the current shelter has such negative associations with antisocial behaviour that they'll go for a radical change just for the sake of being as different as possible. I really hope they don't succumb to that kind of irrational thinking, though. I assume they have to build a new one in order to make it larger, so it won't literally be the same, but I hope it keeps basically all the same design features as the existing shelter. 

They are also asking what to do about seating - everything from standing room only, to leaning rails, to seating, to a mixture of sitting and leaning. 

The question about seating in the survey (via CoB)

Again I suspect this has come up because of the antisocial behaviour issue - the same logic that led to one shelter being removed, giving people fewer places to sit, presumably also suggests that people would loiter less if they had no place to sit - but again this would be a bad move. Not only would it punish all the normal passengers who just want to sit while they wait for their bus, in my experience the antisocial crowd are perfectly happy to stand - they very often stand around in a circle, blocking the footpath, even when there's seats available. 

My strong view is that there should be as much seating as possible. I don't know anyone who prefers those leaning rails to seating; leaning rails are often well-used, but only because people prefer leaning to standing. Certainly the idea that it should be standing-room only is ridiculous, and I believe would be contrary to DDA requirements. Most people want to sit and rest at the bus stop; some people absolutely need to. 

Now - onto the positives. 

They propose to shift the wombat crossing to align with Time Ln (via CoB)

I'm very much in favour of moving the wombat crossing from its current location out the front of the newsagents to being in front of Time Lane. This will allow much more seamless access from the Mall (and Big W carpark and beyond) to the bus interchange and Woolworths, while maintaining access to Coles. 

Reducing Little Bridge Street down to one lane of general traffic is a good traffic calming measure, which should make it much safer and more pleasant for pedestrians and cyclists, for cars pulling out of the angle parking, and for buses. 

Creating a new shared-use path along Little Bridge is something I wasn't really expecting - this didn't appear on earlier drafts of Mall area redevelopment plans - but it's a pleasant surprise. This integrates well with the broader cycling plans in the area (or at least it will if they provide a connection to Porter Street, which seems to be out of scope but being investigated for the future). East-west cycling connectivity through the Mall area has been a bit unanswered question throughout the Mall redevelopment process, so I'm extremely pleased to see it included - and to my eyes the designs look good. 

The western end of the street (via CoB)

The shared path will start on the north side of Little Bridge, connecting with the path on Grenville that's currently under construction. It will cross over at Coliseum Walk, with a wombat crossing replacing the signalled pedestrian crossing, and a new wombat crossing over a relocated car park exit. Both of these are great moves. The wombat crossing at Coliseum Walk will be much better for pedestrians coming from the Mall, as well as for cyclists using the new path. Moving the car park exit is also a great idea - there are sometimes conflicts between cars exiting the carpark and buses pulling out from the stop, so spacing them out a bit will help avoid those conflicts - and making it a wombat crossing will be great for pedestrians and cyclists too. 

The existing pedestrian crossing at the carpark entrance will be maintained. They haven't mentioned it in the plans, but they will need to revamp it slightly to allow bikes to move across seamlessly (zebra crossings are only for pedestrians). It also looks like there will be a bit of a buffer between the path and any cars in the section behind the bus stop, which is good - you don't want people to be too hemmed in, even if the path is fairly wide. 

So overall, I'm a bit worried about what might happen with the shelter, but the plans for the streetscape look really good. I'd encourage everyone to make their views known - give your feedback here.