FAQs

Sylvan Road is a principal cycle route as part of the Queensland Government’s Principal Cycle Network and a key connector to the popular Western Freeway and Bicentennial bikeways. In 2017, following a successful trial, Council introduced peak period bike lanes in a section of Sylvan Road to provide more space for people riding bikes. 

The current road corridor is a mix of peak hour bike lanes and bike lanes between parked cars and vehicle traffic. With more than 1130 cycling and e-mobility trips taken along Sylvan Road on a weekday, there is an opportunity to improve safety along this corridor for everyone by investigating options to separate cyclists and motorists.

Feedback provided during the previous Move Safe Brisbane consultation showed a strong desire for safer ways to travel along the popular route.  Feedback Council received in June 2025 further showed strong community desire for separated facilities along Sylvan Road, safer turning movements and improved crossing facilities. 

Sustainable transport options will also boost foot traffic and improve amenity with a more pleasant streetscape and better connectivity to local destinations like shops, schools and public transport.

We know this route is important to our city and we are exploring ways to make Sylvan Road safer for all users and provide a high-quality active transport connection between the Western Freeway Bikeway and Bicentennial Bikeway. Alternative routes for this connection are not being considered at this stage of the project. 

The Western Freeway Bikeway is a dedicated off-road cycleway that runs parallel to the Western Freeway and Centenary Highway from the west of Toowong all the way through to Richlands.

The Bicentennial Bikeway is 4.8km of off-road pathway from Toowong to Brisbane City - providing access to Southbank, Kangaroo Point and New Farm through connecting bridges and pathways. 

Creating a continuous active transport connection between these two bikeways will provide a direct and safe active transport route from Richlands in the west to the Brisbane City and beyond. 

Providing a safe, separated, facility along a route with high demand will benefit travellers in all transport modes. Separation between pedestrians, cyclists and e-scooters, and vehicles gives every member of the community the option to safely travel in the transport mode that best suits them with reduced conflict.

For residents and businesses, sustainable transport options will boost foot traffic and improve amenity with opportunities to incorporate more pleasant streetscaping.

Whether you're walking to the local coffee shop, dropping your children to school or cycling from the CBD to the western suburbs - this connection will make your travel along Sylvan Road safer and easier.

In June 2025, we sought feedback from the community about what you felt were the challenges and opportunities when travelling through the project area. You can view a summary of that feedback here.

Overall, we heard strong support for a separated bikeway on Sylvan Road, with 93% of respondents saying such a facility would have a very positive or positive effect on their travel experience.

These designs provide a safer, separated cycling connection between the Western Freeway Bikeway and Bicentennial Bikeway, helping improve a critical missing link in the network. Traffic network improvements and intersections upgrades have also been designed to support movements through the area and make it safer and easier to travel through your community. 

As these are early concept designs, they are all subject to further investigation and more specific details may change during design refinement and where community feedback can be incorporated.

The concept design options for this important corridor were developed after detailed investigations, traffic assessments, safety reviews and consideration of community feedback.

A range of data and guiding information was collected, such as traffic counts, active travel counts, speed surveys, on-street parking occupancy and duration surveys, traffic modelling, crash history and Strava heatmaps. 

Alongside these investigations, we’ve carefully considered community feedback provided via our online survey in mid-2025. This feedback helped us understand the views and needs of the community who visit, live in and travel through this precinct, including opportunities to improve safety, amenity and travel options.

A number of design options were scoped and assessed before determining the two concept design options we have shared best meet the project aims, technical requirements and community needs.

We’re investigating potential changes at key intersections along Sylvan Road and Milton Road to support this important active transport connection. The intersections in the project area along Sylvan Road were identified in our investigations and community feedback as key conflict points for people walking, riding, and driving. 

We’ve reviewed intersection layouts and turning arrangements to ensure they support the safest and most efficient movement. We also looked for opportunities to create a better road network by reducing traffic stress, improving safety for all road users and supporting active travel on Sylvan Road.

The intersection of Sylvan Road, Croydon Street and Jephson Street plays a key role in the multi-directional movement of all transport modes through the precinct. The designs for this intersection supports more protected turning and crossing movements for vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians. Traffic signal timing will also be adjusted to appropriately support the volumes expected for each movement. 

The designs for Sylvan Road between Milton Road and Croydon Street/Jephson Street both include improvements to the Milton Road, Croydon Street and Morley Street intersection. This intersection plays an important role in connecting motorists to Milton Road, a key east-west connection between Brisbane’s inner city and western suburbs. The design includes changes at this intersection to support safe and efficient movement from Croydon Street and Morley Street onto this busy major road. To deliver this project smoothly, we anticipate early works at this intersection starting from mid-2026. This will make sure you benefit from an improved network sooner while the Sylvan Road bikeway design is being refined.

We will make minor enhancements to the traffic island on Sylvan Road at Milton Road to widen the pedestrian refuge island and better delineate traffic turning left from Sylvan Road onto Milton Road. There are no further changes proposed at the Milton Road and Sylvan Road intersection at this time. We carefully considered potential movement changes and determined their impacts to traffic flow on Milton Road would have unacceptable impacts on the broader road network.

We’ve undertaken extensive investigations to determine the project alignment and the designs that are the most appropriate. We are not considering alternative alignments or fundamental changes to the design options at this time.

We expect to proceed with one of the 2 concept design options for Sylvan Road between Milton Road and Croydon Street/Jephson Street (including the changes at Milton Road, Croydon Street and Morley Street intersection), and the one concept design for Sylvan Road and Land Street between Croydon Street/Jephson Street and Patrick Lane.

The project scope recognises the important connection between Sylvan Road and the Western Freeway Bikeway, and the grant scope includes preliminary investigations in this area. The concept designs have been developed to ensure they support future connections in this area and the feedback gathered from the community about the challenges and opportunities here will continue to provide a valuable reference for future design work, when funded.

We investigated a wide range of options to meet the project aim of delivering dedicated separated travel facilities for each travel mode.

Currently, peak hour parking restrictions on Sylvan Road provide some capacity for on-road cycling, though feedback shows riders and motorists feel potential crashes make this facility challenging. Improving the current conditions with only line marking would also require increased parking restrictions to reduce crash risk. Painted bike lanes alone would not be suitable for riders of all abilities, and fall short of the safety design requirements for a facility of this kind. On balance, the impacts to on-street parking would outweigh the limited benefits to a limited number of users. Physically separated facilities meet technical design requirements, provide increased safety for all users, including motorists, and increased accessibility for users of all abilities.

We also considered a wide shared path, which people would walk, ride and scoot on together. The width of the existing verge along Sylvan Road varies and doesn’t provide enough room for a shared path without significant parking removals, tree removals and private property impacts. This option would also not meet the project aim of providing separated facilities for all travel modes. On balance, the impacts of a shared path outweigh the benefits.

Yes, you are able to cross the bike lanes to enter private property, when safe to do so. Bin collection will still be undertaken as usual. A 1‑metre‑wide space will separate the bikeway from the road, and this area will include line markings showing where to place your bins to enable safe collection without impacting the bikeway. When taking your bins in and out, please check for people riding in the bikeway.

We understand changes to routes can bring uncertainty and always carefully consider what the potential impact of any change may be. One of the key challenges for people travelling in this area, across all types of travel, is conflict with other travel modes. The changes that are proposed to turning movements all work together to reduce the conflict between vehicles and cyclists. As part of the design process traffic modelling is undertaken so we can determine what, if any, impact a change to traffic movement may have to the surrounding network. Traffic modelling has confirmed the network has capacity to accommodate these changes to traffic movements and the network of well-connected local streets minimises the impact of taking alternative routes for travellers.

We expect to be able to share a final concept design with the community in mid-2026.

Construction will be in stages, with early works planned at the Milton Road, Croydon Street and Morley Street intersection in mid-2026, followed by works for the Sylvan Road bikeway in 2027, subject to detailed and budget confirmation. We'll keep you updated as the project moves forward.

The Toowong intersection improvements and Sylvan Road bikeway is proudly supported by the Queensland Government's Cycle Network Local Government Grants program and the Australian Government's Active Transport Fund.