The AusCycling Facility Guide: Your first step towards building a better place to ride

Riding a bike can improve our health, strengthen connection to community, improve outcomes for the environment, and make our cities and towns more liveable.

However, as anyone who’s ever attempted to build a velodrome, BMX track or mountain bike trail will tell you, there’s a baffling number of resources to consume, a host of specifications to consider, and government and community groups to consult.

To make this process easier, AusCycling has brought together material from across a range of resources and presented it in an easy to follow, user-friendly document.

The AusCycling Facility Guide introduces anyone interested in bike facilities to concepts such as design principles and project planning, so they can achieve the best possible outcome for their community, as Executive General Manager of Government Strategy Nick Hannan explained.

“From project initiation to development and delivery, creating a contemporary bike facility is an extremely complicated process. The AusCycling Facility Guide introduces that process in a simple and straightforward manner for anyone thinking about building a bike facility,” Hannan said.

“After reading the guide, stakeholders can come to AusCycling and have a fully informed conversation about what to expect along the journey, and how we can offer advice, representation, and resources during planning and development”.

The guide seeks to ensure stakeholders maximise their investment in facilities, and by incorporating AusCycling’s universal design philosophy, it also aims to provide inclusive environments for all ages and abilities.

Hannan said the potential audience for the guide ranges from clubs and developers to state and local governments, and given the complex subject matter and diverse audience, a priority has been placed on accessibility.

“This is not a 1200-page document detailing the planning requirements and facility specifications for venues in every discipline in each state and territory. Instead, it takes a complicated process and explains it in a straightforward way so we can all work towards creating better bike facilities in Australia.”

To create safe places for people to ride in the community, the AusCycling Facility Guide can point you in the right direction.

AusCycling Facility Guide highlights:

• How to guide: Outlines how the guide should be used to ensure the right questions are asked during the design process to deliver a high-quality facility.
• State of Play: Provides the context of cycling in Australia and encourages readers to consider its impact on the design of their project.
• Design and planning principles: Summarises the universal design principles that should be considered in the design of any project.
• Project planning: Outlines the typical stages involved in planning, designing, and constructing a new cycling facility.
• Facility Guidelines: Provides the minimum essential standards of the playing area for major cycling disciplines and supporting infrastructure in a project.
• Venue Approval: Explains the process behind granting approval to new facilities, or homologation, and how engaging with AusCycling during the design stage will ensure a smooth venue approval process.

The AusCycling Facility Guide is available here.