Transforming Collins Street

A key goal of the City of Hobart Transport Strategy is to create a city with safe, easy travel options.

We are creating a transport network to suit your travel needs. It will offer options: car, bus, bike, scooter, ferry, or walking.

Unsurprisingly, driving is the most popular way to travel to Hobart's city centre.

This makes sense. Many of us travel into town from places too far to walk or ride. Others have limited public transport options.

And yet walking into Hobart is also a popular travel choice for many people.

Did you know we have the highest number people out of every capital city in Australia who walk to work each day?

Or that the number of people riding a bike to work in Hobart each day is increasing?

Plans to make Collins Street safe and green for pedestrians, shoppers, and cyclists have been in the works for almost fifteen years!

The Hobart Rivulet Track connects South Hobart and kunanyi / Mt Wellington with the city. It's a popular route into Hobart for walkers and cyclists.

Plans to extend this route along Collins Street date back to the 2011 Hobart Rivulet Park Strategic Master Plan. They were also noted in the Inner City Action Plan. Since then, much work has improved the Hobart Rivulet Track. In 2022, we installed traffic lights at the intersection of Molle and Collins streets. This was to make the popular road crossing safer for pedestrians, cyclists, motorists, and families.

The next major step is to make Collins Street safer for pedestrians and cyclists. It should encourage people to stay and explore local businesses.

Streetscape changes on Collins Street will be done using infrastructure that can be easily moved and adjusted. This makes it quicker and cheaper to install new infrastructure, and allows us to monitor its effectiveness, seek community feedback and identify any changes needed before we make the design element permanent. This may include line marking, signage, bollards and other temporary materials that can be quickly installed and adjusted.

The current concept design includes protected bike lanes on both sides of Collins Street, from Molle Street to Murray Street, as well as a short section between Harrington Street and Victoria Street that will be a 'shared zone' where bike riders share the road space with general traffic. From Molle Street to Murray Street, bike lanes will be separated from general traffic lanes by either parking spaces, kerbing or painted line marking.

The concept also includes opportunities for streetside dining, a new pedestrian crossing and street greening to create more welcoming spaces for people.

Collins Street is an important street in our CBD, with a vibrant mix of businesses and plenty of pedestrian activity day and night. Improving the streetscape with bike lanes, streetside dining and improved pedestrian upgrades will encourage people to linger longer on Collins Street as a place for people.

Giving people greater options in how they move along Collins Street, including by bike, and on foot, is also important, and our designs are aimed at ensuring people have safe and efficient routes with some streets being prioritised for specific modes of transport.

Creating safer pathways for people riding bikes along Collins Street is a key action identified in both the Central Hobart Plan and the Greater Hobart Cycling Plan.

Collins Street has also been identified as a strategic cycling corridor in the Inner Hobart Transport Network Operations Plan, which guides where different transport modes should be prioritised.

A lower speed environment, streetside dining, a new pedestrian crossing and street greening will create a more comfortable, inviting environment for people walking and spending time on Collins Street, which is good for business and good for our city.

The City will remove around 49 on-street car spaces to make room for the bike lanes (this a retention of 10 spaces from our initial concept). This will reduce the chance of collisions between bike riders and drivers.

Important kerbside functions, including loading bays and accessible parking, have been prioritised.

The City has researched parking availability in the area. It wants to ensure drivers can still park nearby.

There will be 29 on-street parking spaces on Collins Street. All current loading zones and 2 disability car parks will remain (with additional disability car parks installed nearby). All on-street car parking on Victoria Street will remain.

Other key parking opportunities for those driving cars include:

• There are over 150 on-street carparks on five side streets off Collins Street (Molle, Barrack, Harrington, Victoria, and Murray). They are within one block of Collins Street. These 30-minute and 1-hour spaces turn over many times a day and are free after 6 pm and on public holidays.
• The Village Cinemas car park on Collins Street is open from 7 am to midnight, 7 days a week. It has 400 spaces, including 8 for disabled users.

The City of Hobart owned and operated Centrepoint Car Park, next to Collins Street. It has 780 carparks, including 16 for disabled users. Our parking data tells us that the car park is very rarely at full occupancy and on average has 15 per cent vacancy.

We will monitor parking on Collins Street and nearby streets during the trial. We will respond to any negative impacts immediately.

In some sections, parking spaces will be placed between bicycle lanes and vehicle lanes. This design has been implemented on Campbell Street and reduces the risk and severity of collisions between bike riders and drivers.

In other sections, kerbside parking spaces will be removed to accommodate two vehicle lanes and two bicycle lanes. Important kerbside functions, including loading bays and accessible parking, have been prioritised.

Our analysis indicates there is sufficient parking available on surrounding streets, and in nearby off-street car parks.

We will monitor parking availability on Collins Street and surrounding streets as part of this project and manage impacts as needed.

Yes. The Greater Hobart Travel Survey is undertaken by the State Government every four years and found that there are 3200 journeys by bike every day in our Council area.

We know that the number one barrier to more people taking up riding or any form of 'active transport' is safety so the work we're doing today is about creating a tomorrow where people feel like they have safe options for any mode of transport they choose.

Tactical delivery approaches

Traffic management

Timeframe: hours or days

Temporary

Timeframe: 1-2 years

Adjustable

Timeframe: 2+ years

Pop-up to permanent: Pitt Street, Sydney

Before

Pop-up

Permanent

The key stakeholder engagement period is now closed. Thank you to all who provided their feedback.

The adjustable nature of the project provides the opportunity for broad community engagement following installation, with monitoring, evaluation and community feedback informing any required modifications to the project once installed.

Data collected during this phase will also inform designs for permanent installation of streetscape changes on Collins Street as part of the Collins Street vision project, identified in the Central Hobart Plan.

We will make regular updates to this webpage and directly to our project mailing list at key milestones.

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