East BUG Inc.

06/05/2026

05/05/2026

The Goodwill Bridge will be CLOSED this Thursday 7th May. Not for maintenance, but for a $360 per head dinner.

Please allow extra time if your commute usually takes you via the Goodwill Bridge. Better still, take a slightly longer detour on the way home, and ride with a few hundred friends over the Story Bridge instead:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1892952878031505

01/05/2026

How do you feel about being told you have a “personal choice” to ride with cars, buses and trucks on Wynnum Rd if you want to be able to travel faster than jogging speed on your safe, legal e-bike? Are you concerned that new restrictive compliance requirements likely mean your bike will not even be legal after 1 July? Or perhaps someone in your family doesn’t qualify for a driver’s licence but can safely ride an e-bike but the government wants to take that freedom away from them?

Join the Story Bridge Active Travel Alliance on Thursday evening for a protest ride across the Story Bridge and up Shafston Ave on the road—because the shared path could soon be off-limits—to Mowbray Park. This is our last chance to be seen and heard before the committee hands down their report on the e-Mobility Bill on Friday.

27/04/2026

We listened to some more very interesting presentations to the parliamentary committee responsible for the e-Mobility bill this morning. So many great points—especially by road safety experts from QUT, Griffith University, and the University of Queensland reminding the committee that there is no evidentiary basis to “crack down” on safe, low-powered, pedal-assist bicycles. Those are very safe transport devices and shouldn’t be conflated with e-scooters, and certainly not with 2-wheeled devices that are more akin to motorcycles.

Chris from Brisbane West BUG explained very succinctly: compliant pedal-assist e-bikes are simply bicycles, and shouldn’t be treated any differently.

Professor Narelle Haworth from QUT stressed that research demonstrates bike riders are in general very law-abiding, but will naturally prioritise their own safety and the safety of others around them ahead of the letter of the law.

In these images of the “CBD to Wynnum Bikeway” (which doesn’t even meet the standards for a footpath), e-bike riders are going make a quick assessment on their safety riding at 25kph on the right with the cars, trucks and other heavy vehicles, and almost always opt for the empty path on the left even though they will be technically breaking the law when they exceed 10kph. Over a thousand people typically navigate this path every day—walking, cycling, and on e-scooters. Yes, people need to be very careful and respectful in their interactions with others because the infrastructure is so poor, but it's very obvious (to anyone who isn't wilfully ignorant) where the real danger lies.

The LNP members of the e-mobility committee and the government have tried to argue that their intent isn’t to force people to ride on dangerous roads, or to give up riding altogether. But if the bill passes in its current form, those will be the only practical lawful options.

21/04/2026

Thanks Bicycle Queensland for rallying people from all across Brisbane and the state to defend the use of safe, sensible, legal e-bikes. It was great to see a couple of our local east-side members of parliament too - Joe Kelly MP (Member for Greenslopes) and Joan Pease MP (Member for Lytton). Both Joe and Joan ride pedal-assist e-bikes themselves, and have family members who ride.

20/04/2026

If you ride a bike from Brisbane’s eastern suburbs towards the CBD, you’ll know that the “CBD to Wynnum Bikeway” is actually just a shared footpath for most of the first 3km east from the CBD, and doesn’t exist at all beyond that. So if you ride an e-bike to make your commute easier in the hills, heat, and humidity, you might soon be facing the choice of crawling along at jogging speed on the off-road path, or ‘sharing’ the lane Wynnum Rd with cars, buses and trucks at 60kph. If the state government’s e-bike laws pass as currently proposed, it’s very likely your e-bike would even become illegal.

We’ll be joining Bicycle Queensland’s e-mobility advocacy pop-up tomorrow (Tuesday) morning in the City Botanical Gardens to protest absurd and unnecessary rules that would effectively treat safe low-powered pedal-assist bicycles like motor vehicles. We fully support making conditions safer for people to walk and ride, as well as cracking down on the promotion, sale, and use of illegal electric motorbikes—especially by children. But the draft laws as they currently stand will make Queensland the most difficult place in the world to safely ride a bicycle for transport.

More from BQ: https://bq.org.au/event/will-your-e-bike-be-illegal/

13/04/2026

Queensland residents, the UQ Micromobility Research Cluster is seeking to better understand behaviours and opinions relating to e-mobility devices across the state, including e-scooters, e-bikes, and e-skateboards, from both users and non-users.

Please complete the survey at https://lnkd.in/eVdznHMT before 20th April.
Participants can also enter a draw to win one of 20 $500 vouchers.

01/04/2026

Just in time to share this important announcement...

23/01/2026

If you ride over the Gateway Bridge Cycleway it is now much easier and safer to reach off-road bikeways on the north side like the Kedron Brook Bikeway, Jim Soorley Bikeway, and Gateway North Bikeway. Simply follow the Moreton Bay Cycleway signs to Schneider Rd, head up the overpass and then turn back underneath to find this new path from Scheider Rd through to Viola Place at Brisbane Airport. The new path opened this morning!

20/01/2026

According to the Courier Mail, work is due to start shortly on a refurbishment of the Morningside Central shopping precinct— which includes Woolworths, Feast on Fruit, and other specialty shops and medical services. The work will involve extending some of the shops, converting the central courtyard into an indoor mall, raising the carpark and adding a second story for a total of around 250 customer car parking spaces (plus 50 for staff).

The plans only show 3 bike parking rails (ie. a maximum of 6 bikes if they are appropriately spaced), in an area that doesn’t appear to be undercover, and which is almost as far away as possible from the supermarket entrance. It’s also not clear if it will be possible to ride up to the rack—which is one of the advantages of the existing railing people use to lock their bike while shopping now.

The plans don’t seem to give much consideration to pedestrian access to the precinct either; almost as if the designers don’t understand that local people often walk to shops and services.

There doesn’t appear to be a pedestrian entrance from Wynnum Rd —including from bus stop 30 (despite being named “Morningside Central”) or from the intersection of Junction and Wynnum Rd where anyone from south of Wynnum Rd will likely cross at the pedestrian lights.

There’s also no pedestrian entrance proposed from Wynnum Rd east of the rail bridge. Presumably people will continue to walk across the grass/dirt there and through the carpark, but they will soon have to navigate more hectic traffic—including vehicles heading to the rooftop parking level and drivers using the online pickup bays.

It doesn’t look as though there are any improvements planned for people walking to the centre along Junction Rd or across it either. It appears the staircase from Armstrong Rd into the rear carpark will be retained, but there are no access improvements planned.

A $30million project like this should have been an opportunity to make the shopping centre more accessible for people arriving by bus, bike, and on foot. Simply providing more car parking will make the traffic conditions at the entries and exits worse.

The website claims "the redeveloped Morningside Central will make it easier and more enjoyable for locals to shop, meet and access essential services close to home". And yet the plan seems totally focused on people arriving by car rather than making it easier and more pleasant for locals to walk or ride instead.