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Blueprint with 600 km of cycleways for Sydney's west

The NSW Government has unveiled plans for more than 600 km of new paths and lanes across the region.

The initiative is the latest expansion of the NSW Government's Strategic Cycleway Corridors Program, which aims to deliver Sydney riders more than 1,000 km of new cycleways to boost the number of trips taken by bike.

The newly released plans encompass bike route mapping for Sydney's Central River City and Western Parkland City.

The corridors for Central River City identify 32 strategic cycleways covering around 340 km in all, along with five immediate opportunities to connect existing cycleways in the city's west:

  • Macquarie Park connections
  • Bankstown to Campsie connection
  • Parramatta to Westmead connection
  • Blacktown CBD connections
  • Wentworth Point to Sydney Olympic Park connection

In Western Parkland City, the plan identifies 26 new cycleways covering around 295 km. Among those, five immediate opportunities have been identified to connect existing routes for bikes:

  • Penrith and Kingswood connection
  • Kingswood to St Marys connection
  • Liverpool to Moorebank connection
  • Liverpool to Casula connection
  • Campbelltown to Macarthur connection

Prioritising these projects will help forge new connections between key locations and fill important gaps in the network, according to the government.

“This is a blueprint for bike lanes that maps out 58 corridors stretching from Box Hill to Burwood, down to Macarthur and back up to Western Sydney Airport and Penrith, transforming the way Western Sydney families travel,” said NSW Minister for Active Transport Rob Stokes.

“Building this infrastructure will allow people to leave the car at home and move from suburb to suburb on bikes, promoting healthy lifestyles, helping the hip pocket, easing congestion and reducing emissions.”

The latest bike lane blueprint follows the release of the Strategic Cycleway Corridors for the Eastern Harbour City midway through 2022. Those plans point to around 250 km of new cycleway corridors in Sydney's east, and were described by Stokes as “Sydney’s answer to London’s super cycleway.”

These initiatives follow the significant growth in the uptake of bike riding in New South Wales in recent years. A 2021 Walking and Cycling Participation Survey for the state found that bike riding in Sydney had increased by 10% since 2017.

New bike infrastructure in Sydney's CBD has also proved a big hit in recent years, particularly the Pitt St pop-up lane which saw a five-fold increase in trips along the street and became one of the city's busiest bike thoroughfares. This and other pop-up lanes have since been made permanent.

Meanwhile, work continues on improving connections in the CBD, with key gaps on track to be linked up by the end of 2023.

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