Cycling in Bendigo: The Rail Trails That Connect the Goldfields

Bendigo's cycling network, anchored by the Bendigo Creek Trail and connected to the Heathcote-Bendigo Rail Trail that extends south through the wine country toward Heathcote, provides the recreational cycling infrastructure that a regional city with both urban trails and long-distance rail trail connections offers its residents and the cycling tourism market that rail trail travel has created across regional Victoria. The combination of the urban trail network along the creek corridor through the city and the rail trail connections to the surrounding countryside gives Bendigo's cycling infrastructure a range that allows both the daily commuter and recreational cyclist and the touring cyclist to find appropriate routes.

The Heathcote-Bendigo Rail Trail, following the former railway line through the gentle hills and the goldfields landscape between Bendigo and Heathcote, provides the long-distance cycling route through the Heathcote wine region that the wine tourism market uses for the cycling cellar door visit format that has become popular across Victoria's rail trail network. The trail's passage through the Heathcote wine country, with the distinctive red Cambrian soils that give Heathcote's Shiraz its distinctive character visible from the trail, connects the cycling experience to the wine and food tourism that the region supports.

The Loddon River Rail Trail and the Calder Rail Trail extensions that are planned or under development from the Bendigo base will extend the cycling network that existing rail trails have established, creating the connected trail system that regional Victoria's trail cycling market has been calling for. The connected trail network allows cyclists to plan multi-day itineraries through the goldfields and the agricultural country of central Victoria that the current network of separate rail trails does not yet support.

The Bendigo council's cycling strategy, developed with the community engagement that creates the shared understanding of what cycling infrastructure investment the community supports, has established the on-road cycling network improvements and the off-road trail connections that make cycling more viable as a transport mode for the daily commuting trips that car dependency currently captures. The mode shift from car to bicycle for short urban trips reduces the congestion and the parking demand that the car-dependent travel pattern generates in the CBD.

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