I am going to write a series of articles called Beat the Bus. The purpose of these articles is to come up with popular rides where you can easily beat public transport whilst not riding too fast. To qualify, a ride needs to be going to a place where a lot of people travel to, the roads need to be shared path or at least a decent enough well marked council road. Average speed must be under 20km per hour. And the whole journey needs to be under 45 minutes.
My first winning path starts at the north eastern end of Botany (Pagewood) running on the shared path on the edge of Wentworth Avenue. Then this trail heads dead north along Dunning Avenue all the way to Green Square Station on decent enough roads. Gardeners Rd is tough to cross but after that is reasonable enough riding on streets with modest traffic. At Green Square its then wonderful George St cycleway all the way to Prince Alfred Park. Took me 30 minutes on the eBike cruising at 17.5km average speed. Its all flat.
The bus takes 45 minutes. There is a bus train combo that can do it in 30 minutes if you time it perfectly. Driving is not an option as you have to pay to park. Here is the Strava or here in Ride with GPS
Summary – BOTANY to CENTRAL STATION 30 mins by bike saving 15 minutes
Anyone can do this in any city, just study your maps, do a few practice rides on Sunday morning, get fit and ride some or all the way to work if you can find decent enough roads. If you can’t find a way, can you ride to a station or take your bike part of the way in a car. Give it a go.
You can see the trail on our Sydney map here >>>
Notes: On the trail map, notice the purple trail that is adjacent to Southern Cross Drive. It goes under Gardeners Rd and could work for people heading to Zetland that want an easy ride. This will be a good track when the Zetland to Bourke Rd connections open up a bit more.