St Kilda Road is Melbourne's premier boulevard and is one of the busiest tram routes in the world. It also has a high incident of pedestrian and bicycle crashes due to the relatively poor standard of the facilites provided for these users. For cyclists this consists of a 1.5m painted cycle-way between parked cars and live traffic travelling at 60km/h plus. With up to 1000 cyclists during the peak period it is not surprising that there are many 'dooring' crashes. A large number of pedestrians cross the route, especially to access the central tram lines, with multiple stage crossings and mid-block crossing desire-lines pedestrians are also not well catered for. To create a step change in design and the associated innovation the Victorian Traffic Accident Commision (TAC) appointed an international team of four experts to develop up a safe system solution for the route. This consisted of two Swedes, an American and a Kiwi. This presentation will outline the issues along the route for pedestrians and cyclists, the 'unique' solution that was developed and the results of a multi-criteria analysis (MCA) that showed how the developed solution would out-perform all alternatives, especially in terms of moving toward s a safer system for these modes.
