We're excited to share that Bike Marrickville has partnered with Sydney Bike Rave — and their next ride is just around the corner.

If you haven't been, Sydney Bike Rave is Sydney's loudest group ride: a rolling block party that takes over the city once a month after dark. Neon lights, big sound, no racing, no drop, no egos — just dozens of riders and a lot of new friends. It's free, all welcome, and run entirely by volunteers.

Ellis Bou-Harb, president of Bike Marrickville: "As the old adage goes, there’s safety in numbers. Riding in a group with music is fun, but it’s also a great way to check out roads that can feel inaccessible to all but the most confident riders.
Together, even King Street and Enmore Road can welcome beginners, or families with kids on cargo bikes. This is one of the many reasons we love Sydney Bike Rave, and are excited to co-host the August ride!"

Details:

• Saturday 29 August 2026
• Gather from 5.30pm 
• Roll-out 6:00pm sharp from Prince Alfred Park Pool, Surry Hills
• Slow, social, and nobody left behind

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Joining is easy. Sign the rider waiver at sydneybikerave.org — that's how you RSVP, and it keeps the night looked-after — then turn up early with your lights on. Road-legal pedal-assist e-bikes (250W, cutting out at 25 km/h) are welcome; throttle-only or modded bikes aren't.

Route drops, weather calls and recaps land on their Instagram first, so give them a follow before you head out.

This is exactly the kind of thing we love getting behind: more people out riding, having fun, and showing the city how good streets full of bikes can feel.

This Tuesday – 25 August 2026 – Inner West Council votes on two important documents: a new Parking Strategy and Parking Policy. They may not sound thrilling, but they could shape our streets for years to come.

For decades, most of our kerb space has been reserved for storing private cars. These documents begin to change that — opening the way to use some of that space for protected bike lanes, wider footpaths, street trees, outdoor dining, and calmer local streets.

That's good news for anyone who rides, or who would ride if it felt safer.

But not everyone agrees. There's real concern about losing parking, and those voices are being heard loudly. If they're the only ones in the room on Tuesday, Council may feel pressure to weaken the plans.
That's why it's worth showing up.

Councillors notice who turns out. A visible group of people who support safer, greener streets sends a message that's hard to ignore — that this is what the community actually wants.

You're welcome to simply attend, or to speak at the Public Forum if you'd like to. A few honest sentences about why safe cycling matters to you often carry more weight than any polished argument.

The details
📍 Inner West Council, Ashfield building (260 Liverpool Road)
🕡 Public Forum at 6.30pm - Council meeting at 7.30pm
📅 This Tuesday 25 August 2026
🧑‍💻 https://www.innerwest.nsw.gov.au/council-meetings/current-council-meetings (register by 2.00pm on the day of the meeting)

​Come along, bring a friend, and help make the case for better streets in the Inner West.

Disappointment again for bike riders hoping for a safe route along Addison Road in Marrickville. At last Tuesday's Inner West Council budget meeting a motion by Greens Councillor Olivia Barlow to allocate $100,000 in the 2026/27 budget for the design of walking, cycling and urban amenity upgrades — including a separated cycleway — was defeated by a council majority.

Barlow noted that the community has been asking for this for almost a decade. She's not wrong. The Addison Road route (Local Route 16, running from Livingstone Road to Juliette Street) first appeared in the old Marrickville Bicycle Strategy back in 2007. In 2015, Council received a state government grant to develop a concept plan. Public consultation followed in early 2016 and again in 2017. Parking removal was the main sticking point: some residents objected to losing on-street spaces to make room for bikes. Despite a revised concept plan that actually produced a net increase of one parking space on Addison Road itself, the project was never built.

The road also appears on Inner West Council's own Future Strategic Cycling Network map, which forms part of the 2020 Integrated Transport Strategy "Going Places." The strategy explicitly calls for building separated cycleways on key roads. Addison Road has been on that list for years.

Labor Councillor Philippa Scott acknowledged the project has merit but indicated she wasn't ready to proceed given ongoing resident concerns, but would still "consider it as a future project".

Bike Marrickville has long advocated for a safe cycling connection along this corridor, which links key destinations including the Addison Road Community Centre, Enmore Park, and Marrickville Metro. The road is busy, lacks protected infrastructure, and is identified by Bicycle NSW as one of several Inner West streets that would benefit from both lower speeds and physical separation for riders.
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With the 2026/27 budget now set without funding for even the design phase, riders on Addison Road will have to wait at least another year for progress — and based on the history of this route, possibly much longer.

One more piece of good news from last month's Council meeting: Inner West Council has formally endorsed plans to activate the GreenWay with community events, starting with a 6km fun run.
The GreenWay — the 6km walking and cycling corridor linking the Cooks River at Earlwood to the Parramatta River at Iron Cove and the Bay Run — only opened in December 2025, and it has already taken off. Around 5,000 people attended the opening, and the path has been busy with walkers, bikes, joggers and dog-walkers ever since. Usage tripled in the first two weeks.
Last month's decision kicks off detailed planning for a 6km fun run circuit, starting and finishing at Richard Murden Reserve. The circuit format means no one-way logistics headaches and keeps the event entirely within the Inner West LGA. A half marathon was also considered — using the full GreenWay, the Bay Run and the Cooks River Path — but the 6km option was chosen as the more accessible starting point, open to casual runners as well as serious ones.
Beyond the fun run, Council is expanding its Seniors Morning Tea program to include events at Johnson Park and Richard Murden Reserve, with an intergenerational morning tea planned for October. Cycling activations — bike tune-ups, try-a-bike sessions, and beginner skills courses — are already running at Johnson Park in partnership with Transport for NSW.
The GreenWay has been a long time coming. It's wonderful to see it not just open, but genuinely loved.

This morning, Bike Marrickville joined the Balmain Bike Bus to celebrate UN World Bicycle Day — the United Nations' annual recognition of the bicycle as a simple, affordable, and sustainable means of transport.
A bike bus is exactly what it sounds like: a group ride that follows a set route on a regular schedule, with riders joining and leaving along the way, just like a bus. They're a great way to make riding feel safer and more social, especially for people who don't yet ride alone.
Dozens of riders turned out on a beautiful Sydney morning, including Greens MP Kobi Shetty and Peter McLean and Sarah Bickford from Bicycle NSW, along with many riders from Bike Leichhardt.

[komoot:https://www.komoot.com/tour/3008134484/embed?share_token=ag2lwQ7QnFLEFYT1NqcYhWw7jj07jJQrSG2QrcUJA6lgHW0U8G&layout=classic&profile=1]

The route took us from Loyalty Square in Balmain through the White Bay Power Station site — a rare treat, as the heritage precinct is normally closed to the public — then across ANZAC Bridge, through Pyrmont and Darling Harbour, and up Liverpool Street and College Street to Parliament House. Bicycle NSW and Kobi Shetty are hoping the White Bay route will become a permanent shared path, open 24/7.
The sun was out, the mood was high, and we sailed past the traffic backed up on ANZAC Bridge. What a great day to celebrate the bicycle.
📽️ Watch our YouTube video →

We're going to allow ourselves a small moment of pride for this one.
At last week's Council meeting, Councillors Mat Howard and Kerrie Fergusson moved a motion congratulating Bike Marrickville for our Bicycle Valet service at the Muddy River Festival in March — and asking Council staff to work with us to expand it to at least three more events in 2026-27.
The motion passed. Council staff from the traffic and events teams will now meet with Bike Marrickville to explore opportunities, with a formal plan due at the August Council meeting covering logistics, promotion, and any financial support needed.
The Muddy River Festival showed what's possible. Hundreds of riders used the service — handing over their bike to a volunteer, collecting a ticket, and picking it up safely at the end of the day. No locking up to poles, no worrying about theft, no reason not to ride. Simple, practical, and enormously popular.
Bike valet services have a strong track record in cities like Vancouver and Portland, and in other Sydney council areas. They reduce traffic and parking pressure at events, cut emissions, and give volunteers a brilliant opportunity to chat with residents about cycling in the Inner West.
We're thrilled that Council has recognised the potential here. Watch this space — if you'd like to volunteer at a future Bike Valet event, get in touch. The more hands we have, the more events we can cover.

Aside from the new Lilyfield Road Cycleway, also approved at last night's Council meeting: a motion calling for urgent action on safety along the Carrington Road Cycleway in Marrickville.
The Carrington Road Cycleway holds a special place in Inner West cycling history — opened in 2014, it was the first separated cycleway built by the former Marrickville Council. But more than a decade on, safety problems persist. Vehicles regularly park in and across the cycleway, and drivers frequently fail to yield to cyclists at intersections. A recent ABC news report brought the issue to wider attention, and residents have been calling for action.

The human cost of inaction was made painfully clear last night by Sophie, a south Marrickville resident who used to commute to Sydenham station by bike via the Cooks River and Carrington Road. On the morning of 11 June 2025, a car hit her at the T-intersection with Renwick Street — a paint-only section of the bike lane with no kerb extension, no raised surface, and no signal to drivers that they need to slow down. She was thrown into the middle of Carrington Road at peak hour. "I was extremely lucky that no car ran me over as I was lying in the middle of the road," she told Council. Since the crash, she has observed the intersection firsthand: cars racing down the hill from parallel streets, barely pausing before turning, while delivery trucks park directly in the bike lane, forcing riders into traffic.
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Councillor Mat Howard's motion, adopted by Council last night, directs staff to review signage, markings, kerb extensions and other traffic calming along the route. Importantly, it also requires Council to write to — and doorknock — all businesses on Carrington Road to make clear their obligations not to park on the cycleway, and to work through solutions with them directly.
Bike Marrickville will be consulted on options to improve cyclist safety, and a report with feasible improvements is due at the Local Transport Forum before October 2026. The motion also asks Council to consider a new pedestrian crossing at Renwick Street, improving access for students at Tempe High School.
We welcome this motion and thank Sophie for her courage in speaking last night. The Carrington Road Cycleway was a landmark when it was built — it deserves to work properly.

After months of submissions, speeches, and showing up — the Lilyfield Road Cycleway has been approved. Inner West Council voted last night to formally adopt the recommendations of the Local Transport Forum, and the project now moves into detailed design. Construction is expected to start in early 2027/28.

This is a big deal. The Lilyfield Road Cycleway fills one of the most frustrating gaps in the Inner West cycling network — a steep, bus-and-truck-filled road that has kept all but the most confident riders off what should be a key connection between the GreenWay/Bay Run, Rozelle Parklands, and the Sydney CBD. That gap is finally being closed.

The approved design includes a separated two-way cycleway along the full length of Lilyfield Road from Maliyawul Street to Victoria Road, with raised crossings, kerb buildouts, speed cushions, a new roundabout at Denison Street, and a net gain of 47 parking spaces thanks to new angle parking along the Rozelle Parklands frontage. Watch or rather listen to last night's speakers from Bike Marrickville and other groups at the Council Meeting.

Trees and verges protected
The approval didn't just rubber-stamp the original recommendation — it came with important amendments that strengthened the project, moved by Councillor Kerrie Fergusson (Labor, Balmain) and Councillor Ismet Tastan (Greens, Balmain).

On the steep western section, the minutes now formally confirm that the cycleway will be at least 2.8 metres wide — correcting an error in the agenda documents that had suggested a narrower 2.4 metre path. Advocates from Bike Marrickville, AshBUG, Bike Leichhardt and GreenWay all raised this at the Local Transport Forum last month, and it landed.

On the slip lane at Mary Street, Council committed to advocating to Transport for NSW — which controls traffic signals in NSW — to maximise intersection efficiency as the project progresses. Residents' concerns about traffic impacts were heard, and their petition will be formally referred to TfNSW for consideration.

And on trees: Council has guaranteed that existing trees and grass verges will be protected wherever feasible. If any do need to be removed, they will be replaced with mature specimens in the immediate vicinity.

What happens next
Detailed design is funded and planned for 2026/27. Construction funding will be sought through the TfNSW Get Active Program, with works expected to commence early 2027/28.
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Bike Marrickville will stay engaged through the detailed design phase — there are still opportunities to push for the best possible outcome on width, crossings, and connections. Watch this space.

Inner West Council has released a draft Parking Strategy and we think it's worth paying attention to — and supporting.
For too long, kerbside parking has been treated as a given. Every metre of kerb devoted to storing a private car is a metre that could be a protected cycleway, a street tree, or a café table. This strategy starts to change that default, and that's a big deal.
The strategy commits to repurposing parking for better community uses, constraining parking in new developments, opposing new road capacity, and using parking revenue to fund transport improvements. Council's own road user hierarchy puts cycling above private vehicles — and this strategy starts to put that into practice.
Bike Marrickville is making a submission asking Council to go further: explicitly linking parking reform to cycleway delivery on arterials like Marrickville Road, Sydenham Road and Addison Road, using reclaimed parking space for traffic calming on local streets, and kerbing the long-term storage of boats, trailers and caravans on public streets.

How you can help
The submission period is open until 25 May. The more voices Council hears in support of this strategy — and in favour of going further on cycling — the harder it is to water down under pressure from those who want to keep the status quo. You can make a submission at yoursay.innerwest.nsw.gov.au. Even a few sentences saying you support the strategy and want to see more protected cycleways funded from parking revenue makes a difference.