The Irony of the Greenway: Bikes and the Concretization of the Cooks River Valley

The irony of the “greenway”.
The Roads and Traffic Authority’s vision of the Cooks River: cycleways. In the 1960s, the DMR, predecessor of the RTA planned a roadway for the area. After all, it was only “useless” river bank. Now the river is seen as a solution to the traffic chaos of the city by encouraging “greenway” bike paths. Fortunately, the bike paths are not heavily used, but these are shared paths, and when they are heavily used, they are a potential danger to pedestrian traffic and the dogs that people walk. In places, the degree of concreting has been excessive. The result in some areas is a further industrialization or rather “concretization” of the river environs.

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