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on Monday, August 4th, 2008 at 12:39 am and is filed under local issues.
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August 4th, 2008 at 12:41 am
I love the council garbage pick up service!
August 5th, 2008 at 1:59 am
Get the tram line extended to Dulwich Hill. Get 2nd airport and share burden of air traffic with low density outer suburbs.
August 13th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
The traffic in the area is shocking. My street is Cardigan Street and we constantly have trucks, buses and commercial vehicles using the street as a shortcut to Newton, Petersham and beyond. The traffic often travels at high speed and speed humps in the street are completely ineffective - often hoons go over these at high speed for a cheap thrill. Very dangerous for all the young children in the street. It’s always full of parked cars due to people associated with businesses in Bridge Road taking advantage of the unrestricted parking and nobody takes any notice of the no right turn restriction from Cardigan Street into Salisbury Road. My previous complaints to Council have brought the response that traffic volume is “within limits”. Not from my observation it isn’t.
August 15th, 2008 at 8:16 am
Currently, along my end of New Canterbury Rd, (around the Livingstone Hotel), there is increasing amounts of places that will be “developed”. Opposite the Turkish pizza place on West Street, it looks as though there is eventually going to be some development of units there. There is NO street parking available a lot of the time as is and these developers are proposing multi unit developments with minimal car parking. It has to stop - I don;t think Petersham can support all these units without proper parking facilities. One per unit is not sufficient as often there are 2 car households.
Secondly - graffiti is appalling. The mural in tunnel under the railway was lovely but its been completely covered by graffiti and the other side of the beautiful old railway station is the same way. Its that old broken windows theory- you have to fix it straight away to beat them at their destructive games.
August 21st, 2008 at 10:53 am
Jack Shanahan park is in need of an upgrade. The basketball court always has glass on it and has a number of depressions. More outdoor sporting areas are needed.
Improvements to cycleways are also important. Safe routes to the city are needed to get people out of their cars.
September 5th, 2008 at 3:04 am
1. Continued dumping of rubbish on Fahey Lane is incredibly annoying. Apart from being extremely unsightly, there are now rats drawn to the food dropped amongst the general litter. It appears that some fish and chip shop is also regularly dumping their old chip fat at the Perry St end of the lane.
2. Unlike neighbouring Sydney City area where nearly all parks are off-leash, Marrickville has 5 widely spaced and time-restricted off-leash areas. For most people seeking to exercise their dogs, and meet up with fellow dog-owners, this means a long walk (during the dark at this time of year), or unnecessary reliance on a vehicle to get to such a park. Public transport is out of the question.
In other parks, not blessed as off-leash, one must run the risk of dodging rangers out to pounce on people for what is essentially a victimless crime. In recent months, similar actions by rangers in the Pittwater area were rejected by a magistrate who asked if the council had not better things to do, or spend its money on.
Note, I do not object to rangers penalising those who do not clean up dog waste, which is a separate issue. But then I don’t see council officers being as hasty to penalise people for littering the streets with cigarette butts (that poison the groundwater) or drop glass on our streets. Like many responsible pet owners, I am quick to offer a bag to a dog owner who hasn’t cleaned up. They generally take the hint better than smokers who don’t even have to stoop to the ground to dispose of their waste.
I would rather the rangers did something about stopping Enmore Park (for example) becoming a nightly graveyard for shopping trolleys from Marrickville Metro* which are often hard to see at night, so walkers and joggers trip over them. The rangers might also care to stop driving around the park in their utility trucks leaving muddy wheel ruts in the grass…
(* An observation: Sydney city buses are poorly designed for those carrying shopping. Compare London buses which have more centre-space so prams, shopping trolleys and bags can be accommodated. Oh, and dogs too
)
Rangers harass cafe and pub owners with outdoor seating, so that they are forced to expel customers with well-behaved dogs sitting _outside_.
Restrictions around play-areas are over-the-top. Consider the high-fenced playground at Camperdown Memorial Park, which has a sign saying that dogs are not permitted within 10m of that wall. Taking that literally, it would be impossible to walk with a dog down the path between the playground and St Stephens cemetery, because of the perceived risk of an acrobatic dog clearing that fence!
3 Compare the signage used in Marrickville parks, which enumerate tedious lists of rules and restrictions, to those in Sydney parks, which are a short message to encourage tolerance and responsibility. (You see the same “love thy neighbour” friendly language in central London too, which is a stark contrast to the biblical recitation of “thou shalt not” commands towering over every napkin-sized piece of greenery here).
In summation, these regulations are more about overt control of citizenry rather than allowing flourishing community interactions. I hope that the council understands the difference.