Tag Archives: A Walk in the Park

At last, a letter

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Finally, I received a response to my submission to Stonnington Council requesting pedestrian crossings at six locations around Toorak.  It only took two letters, a newspaper article, a public rally and a petition with over 30 names.

I think the letter says that four of the locations will be considered for pedestrian crossings; I’m not sure because of the tone of utmost scepticism:

It is likely that the resolution of this matter may take some time due to the gathering of information, design of possible treatments … and consultation with different stakeholders involved …

I expect any investigation and design to be completed promptly, however, construction will depend upon the results of consultation with the community and availability of funds to construct any approved option.

The fifth location is the only one ruled out.  The story about the sixth location, the one where a pedestrian-operated signal is required, is surprising.  A resident had given me copies of correspondence which showed that as long ago as 1986 the Council and/or the Road Traffic Authority — the predecessor of VicRoads — had planned to install some form of traffic control at the very location.  She also showed me correspondence about a much later attempt by Council and/or VicRoads — in 2002 — to install a pedestrian operated signal there.  And now I learn in the letter from Council there have been at least two subsequent attempts by Council and/or VicRoads, as well as an attempt by yet another Government body — the Department  of Transport — just in the space of the last two years to install a pedestrian-operated signal at the spot.  The letter cites ‘concerns for Council’s trees’ as the reason the proposal has failed in a couple of cases, but how is it possible that either a tree or two is not cut down in the interests of public safety, or that despite the apparent preciousness of the trees the proposal keeps getting raised?

The one thing that’s clear is that it’s squarely up to the State Government to get the signal installed.  Considering I started the project by talking to the State Government member and even having him open the community event on 3 May I don’t know what to do next.  If I started with the decision-maker, where else is there to go?

Image: photo taken on road between Ballarat and Dunkeld: St John’s Uniting Church, Streatham.

Dreams of an FOI-powered world

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As part of  the community project, A Walk in the Park, I put in a Freedom of Information (FOI) application on pedestrian accident statistics.

What a brilliant thing is this FOI!  Just taking the application to the Council was a revelation.  The receptionist snapped to attention as if she were in the army and I were someone who could have her do 100 pushups on the spot.  She didn’t just accept the form, but rang the FOI department to make sure someone was there to start processing it forthwith.  And the tones in which she spoke into the phone, “It’s an FOI application!”  So serious, compelling, self-important.  So unlike the real world, I was reluctant to leave.

It turned out the application had to be transferred a couple of times.   First, from one arm of the Council to another, and then from the Council to VicRoads.  At each step of the way, I was informed by letter, with sweet punctiliousness, about the progress of my application. It’s as if the life of these various Government employees depended on communicating with me.  More, on not even dreaming of thwarting my application.  As if the machine of Government were running just for me.

I tell you, it’s worth putting in a FOI application on any subject just for the satisfaction of experiencing the creme de la creme of customer responsiveness.  Wouldn’t you pay $22 (the lodgement fee) over and over again for this?

I even got a call from the VicRoads FOI officer in the late afternoon of the day before Good Friday, a time when surely every other employee in Australia had already left,  describing the information she had assembled and asking if it were satisfactory, or whether I wanted detailed police reports on each incident as well.

Today I received the result of all this beautiful industriousness.  Not as thrilling as the process, but interesting all the same.  In short, there have been 704 accidents involving pedestrians in the electorate of Stonnington in the last 10 years.  I think I thought there’d be more.  In the tiny little square kilometre I’m interested in, there were 20 pedestrian accidents in that period, one of them a fatality.  There’s no particular pattern to the age of the pedestrian (or the driver), or the time of day, or whether the weather was wet or dry in these 20 accidents.  They’re all pretty evenly spread across the spectrum.  Only one thing stands out: only four of them (20%) occurred at traffic lights; the rest occurred at either stop signs, roundabouts or, the majority (45%), where there were no traffic controls at all.  And I reckon I can use this fact to strengthen the case for installing, in particular, a set of traffic lights on the dangerous Williams Road.