Coppin Street is a local (non-arterial) street, but has traffic lights at both Swan Street and Bridge Road, allowing safer crossing of these busy arterial roads and connection through to other parts of Richmond. For this reason it is a popular walking route for kids to get to Richmond Primary School, Richmond High School and Barkly Gardens. For the same reason, Coppin Street is also used as a through traffic route by many drivers attempting to avoid congestion on Burnley and Church streets, particularly in peak hour (and coinciding with students walking, riding and scooting to school).
For riders living close to Coppin Street, it provides a link south to the Main Yarra Trail, from where you can ride off-road all the way to the CBD. To the north, Coppin Street links via Highett, Lennox and Elizabeth streets to the Albert Street protected bike lane and the CBD. The image below shows Yarra’s cycling map from the Transport Strategy; the colour red indicates that a route is ‘non-compliant’ with Yarra’s minimum standards; there are currently no compliant north-south routes in Richmond.
For those living in Cremorne and South Richmond, Coppin Street is the only possible route to head north without having to ride on Swan Street or dash across it. Important destinations include Richmond Town Hall, the pool and recreation centre, Gleadell Street market, and Bridge Road shops. You can also head along quiet local routes nearly all the way to Victoria Gardens shopping centre.
Whilst Coppin Street is already the best north-south cycling option in Richmond, it was still assessed as ‘non-compliant’ under Yarra’s Transport Strategy (YTS). The combination of a narrow painted bike lane between parked cars (dooring risk) and a narrow vehicle lane, with a high volume of traffic, does not meet the minimum level of service for a key route under the YTS assessment guide. Due to the central trees along much of Coppin Street between Swan St and Bridge Road, it is also generally not possible for drivers to legally overtake cyclists (with a 1 m minimum passing distance), meaning they must drive at riding pace. For all the above reasons, Coppin Street was selected as a high priority for safety upgrades.
This year’s Council budget included pop-up intersection treatments on Coppin Street and a corridor study to work out options for further improving cycling safety. The intersection treatments included installing bollards on 5 of the 8 corners at Bridge Road and Swan Street, to create short sections of protected bike lane. Due to space constraints, one vehicle turning lane on the north-eastern corner at Swan St needed to be removed temporarily. If permanent intersection treatments were later installed, it would be possible to remove the centre median and reinstall a turning lane, whilst still having space for a protected bike lane. The turning lanes on the south-western corner of Swan Street, the south-western corner of Bridge Road and the north-eastern corner of Bridge Road remain in place currently – there was no change to vehicle lanes as a result of the pop-up treatments.
On 26th November 2024, part of the omnibus motion put forward included the following:
The motion did not provide confidence that Councillors understood the previous and current configuration of Coppin Street (before and after pop-up treatment), as the barriers were seemingly being blamed for traffic bottlenecks at four locations, despite only one turning lane at one location having been removed as part of the trial. It was also not clear if councillors understood the reasons Coppin Street was being prioritised for upgrades, in the context of the YTS, and that further traffic data was still being collected to assist council officers in presenting options for improvement. Indeed, the intention of the councillor for this part of the omnibus motion was unclear to the community, as there was no explanation during the meeting and Coppin Street had not been mentioned in candidate’s campaign materials or public discussion prior to the recent election.
The motion was amended before being passed, and became even more confusing, as the amendment seemingly intended to replace the incorrect reference to the Bridge Road intersection (Part 12(a)(ii) above) was instead added to the original motion, so that the final version now refers twice to the Swan Street intersection and once to the Bridge Road intersection:
In any case, removing safe bike infrastructure with the hope of reducing traffic congestion on a local road is not only extremely short-sighted, it is also almost certain to be unsuccessful on Coppin Street. Traffic bottlenecks currently occur at Bridge Road and Swan Street because the volume of traffic on Coppin Street is too high for a local road, and because Swan Street and Bridge Road are also congested. Demand for drivers to use local roads as short cuts will continue to climb in Richmond as our population increases, unless we can improve active and public transport infrastructure sufficiently to allow a greater mode shift away from private car use. These principles are all laid out in the Yarra Transport Strategy.
The corridor study is still underway, with public consultation closing on Monday 16th December 2024. The study also includes traffic monitoring (vehicle and bike counters) and cameras to observe degree of queuing, driver and rider behaviour, and to distinguish between local and through traffic.
Possible solutions to permanently improve Coppin Street for cycling require a reduction in through traffic volumes (whilst still enabling local traffic access) and/or reduction in vehicle speeds. Drivers without a local destination need to be encouraged to use Church or Burnley Streets, rather than diverting to other local streets. A reduction in through traffic volume would also increase the amenity of the street for local residents and people walking. Solutions could include modal filters, slow points, making part of the street one way for vehicle traffic, or removing the painted bike lanes and designating the whole area as a 20 km/hr shared zone. Whilst protected bike lanes are also a potential solution, owing to space constraints this would likely require either established centreline trees to be removed along with on-street parking bays on one side of the road, removal of parking on both sides of the road, or removal of one traffic lane to make the street one-way for cars.
Published 9th December 2024