Only 39km? Bugger. Great ride, though! Also, met a nice bloke on the punt, commuting home, does a line in velo apparal at brooklynproject.cc The thermals are definitely my jam, I feel the winters hard at my age. The teamless but simple branding is stylish, too, appealing more to my randoneur sensibilities than most roady gear. I'd have ridden from the punt with him but I've never had a racer's pedigree and any attempt to keep up with an ex racer would have put me in an ambulance, so I wished him rubber side down and set off my fave way home from Westgate Punt, where (mostly) no cars go, HEY! (Insert sax solo) If anybody says, I... "should do the Dixon Veloway," look, I did a few days ago but had decided it's actually worse than the Footscray Rd path. Here's why _I_ don't like the new Dixon, if you like it, I'm genuinely happy for you. 1. It's noisier! Like really noisy. Sound travels upwards from the ground. Despite being below and between the freeway, the Dixon is exposed to all the noise from the ground level roads, these roads have cars and trucks taking off from lights, turns, etc, and this is where motor vehicles make the most noise, revving away from a stop, especially trucks. I'm a retired radio audio operator, sound is my jam, being level but removed from the cars and trucks IS quieter than being above them. I'm also autistic and noise is a big trigger. 2. Getting that elevation above ground takes effort. We can't take ebikes on trains but we can design all veloways for riders on ebikes or racers on training runs? Have we come back to the 90s when engineers listened to cycle clubs rather bicycle user groups? (BUGs) I love a good hill climb, hell, I need them to build my strength back after a heart attack nearly 6 years ago. I DO NOT need new commuter routes that are steeper than the old route, nor do "clubbies", they need to catch a train up to Mernda do there EG rides on real hills. 3. The Dixon, for a single digit kilometerage is a HUGE waste of money. All that achitectural, engineered structure, suspended beneath a freeway could have built maybe as much as 10x as much more commuter-useful infrastructure elsewhere, On the Footscray Rd alternative, there are at least 2 cycle crossings, where the path has to cross access roads for the docks that had traffic lights that changed as I approached. If they can do that on the "obsolete" cycle route, why not on St Georges Rd? Why not just modernise the backstreets, rail-adjacent residential streets, like up the Mernda Line or the Frankston Line? Not just between Southland Shopping Centre and Frankston, but the entire length of the line from Frankston to Caulfield, as the route has been named. If funding the Dixon caused the great, 5km gaping hole between Southland and Ormond, I call the Dixon fake infrastructure. Whinge over, sorry, not sorry. I'd love to know what Harry Barber thinks of the Dixon. He was a big champion of value infrastructure, not half baked glory holes, when I knew him in the 90s.