Welcome back to the Bike Marrickville news section — or, if you've been checking in since 2014, welcome to what must feel like the world's most patient refresh. We took a short break. Twelve years, give or take. In that time, Australia legalised same-sex marriage, survived a global pandemic, watched entire summers turn orange from bushfire smoke, and somehow elected, un-elected, and re-elected governments at a rate that would exhaust a revolving door. You've been busy. So have we. Just... not on the website.
Sydney, meanwhile, had a bit of a glow-up. In 2014 we had just said goodbye to the Monorail, a futuristic loop around Darling Harbour that somehow survived into the 21st century before someone finally asked why. Three councils became one, as Marrickville, Leichhardt and Ashfield merged into Inner West Council — producing a lot of very long council meetings that we have attended so you didn't have to. The Metro opened — then kept opening, until half the city had a shiny underground station and the other half was stuck behind a bus replacement service wondering what they'd done wrong. The Harbour Bridge got a dedicated bike ramp, which felt like a miracle after four decades of advocacy. The GreenWay — which, you may recall, was also "in the works" back in 2014 — finally opened. Underground, WestConnex bored itself through the suburbs at enormous expense, and the newly opened Rozelle Parklands turned out to contain asbestos-contaminated mulch, which was a lot. The light rail made it into the city via a pedestrianised George Street — over budget, behind schedule, but on a good day, genuinely lovely.
Most relevantly for our purposes: Sydney started building actual protected bike lanes. Not just painted lines optimistically labelled "bike lanes" and immediately used for double-parking, but genuine kerb-separated infrastructure on real roads that real people use. Oxford Street. Bourke Street. Wilson Street. Railway Avenue in Stanmore. And, in the finest Inner West tradition, Livingstone Road and Carrington Road — because why build a cycleway smoothly when you can build it... characterfully? Progress has been uneven, occasionally controversial, and never fast enough — but it has been progress, and that is worth saying out loud.
So: Bike Marrickville's news section is back, the Inner West cycling scene has a lot going on, and we have a lot to say about it. Submissions to write, consultations to engage with, infrastructure wins to celebrate, and gaps in the network that deserve considerably more urgency than they're getting. Strap on your helmet, adjust your mirrors if you have them (no judgement), and keep on refreshing our homepage. We hope it will be worth it.