Troy Dobinson is well known in the bicycle trade for creating the Yellow Jersey which now entails a bicycle shop in his home turf of Ipswich, a regional city 44 km west of Brisbane, a newer store in Woolloongabba in Brisbane’s inner south and a mechanical service centre in the Brisbane CBD.
On 24th July 2011 Troy’s mother Narelle was riding her bicycle in the Ipswich suburb of Amberley where there’s a large Air Force base when a US military serviceman who was driving, failed to stop at an intersection and took her life.
As a result of this, Troy created the 24/7 Cycling Safety Fund charity in August 2011 and along with family and a team of volunteers and supporters has been working hard ever since to secure a large parcel of land and funding to build a permanent safe cycling facility for the south east Queensland community.
“It will be an Ipswich City Council facility,” Troy explained. “We proved its worth to Ipswich Council and then took our message to the state government and even federal.
I’ve been to Canberra with our mission.”
After almost five years of lobbying and events Troy had a big breakthrough last Friday.
“We had the Premier’s Budget Breakfast in Ipswich. The Queensland Treasurer, Curtis Pitt, announced $1.5 million of state government funding.”
Troy said that they already had an MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) with Ipswich City Council with whom they’ve been working in partnership with for the past five years. Council had committed $1.5 million provided that they could get matching funds from the state or federal governments, plus allocation of a large area of Council land.
“Council have come on board with a parcel of land at Briggs Road. I wanted something within five kilometres of the CBD, but it ended up being within one kilometre,” Troy said.
“So from a business networking, café’s, retailing, all that side of things, it just works.”
There’s now $3 million of combined state and local funding to build a 2.5 kilometre cycling circuit upon this valuable parcel of land which will be suitable for racing, training, recreational riding, bike education and other uses.
Troy has also been working with the Council on developing an integrated network of cycling paths, some of which will link to this facility as well as major suburbs across the city. But his immediate next focus will be getting the cycling park built.
“Now we’re in the next phase of going to tender, Troy said. “We have some local builders and contractors already interested in building and developing the project. The plan is to be actually scraping dirt and building it before Christmas.”
Because Ipswich Council will own and operate the facility, Troy expects that it will be continue to be maintained and available for cyclists to use for many years to come.
