Page 3060 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 14 August 2013
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comments about Spofforth Street, and to thank Ms Berry and Mr Rattenbury for their comments in relation to that.
When the survey of residents suggested that calming devices were called for, I thought that the number suggested might be a bit OTT, as they say. However, residents seem overjoyed. I am sure that, over time, you, Madam Speaker, Mr Coe, Ms Berry and Dr Bourke have made representations about Spofforth Street to the various ministers for TAMS. Ms Berry has outlined very distinctly, very carefully, some of the history that is behind that.
As I said, when I learned of the initial installations, I thought, “Gee, that sounds like a lot.” Residents seemed overjoyed, but I was a bit concerned about surrounding streets and whether or not there would be any impact. But I am not a road engineer, so I thought, “I am not a person that can really comment about that decision, because I am definitely not a road engineer.” I believe Mr Coe from time to time thinks he might be.
Over time, of course, all of us started to get representations about the surrounding streets and about the noise of some of the vehicles—drivers trying to do what they should not do, and that is drive at speed. The very reason why the calming traffic devices were there was to calm the traffic. If you have a calming device there, it suggests that you actually should not drive at speed over it. But of course you cannot put brains in monuments, and unfortunately some people will refuse to take a hint that they are not supposed to be speeding.
Anyway, as Mr Rattenbury says, sometimes things do not work. And they did not work. When things do not work, and people come to me, as they come to all of us, and say, “Look, this is not working for me, and I do not think that this is working for other people; I would really like the minister to have a look at it,” I do not think that it is a bad thing to actually make those representations to the minister. I do that all the time. Mr Rattenbury knows that I do. He gets a bit overwhelmed from time to time with the number of representations I make on behalf of my constituents.
Sometimes, as Ms Berry said, you get conflicting messages from constituents. You will have constituents saying, “I do not want any more bike paths on the roads.” And then tomorrow, or even the same day, you will get someone emailing you saying, “I really admire the way that you are installing bike paths on the road.” They will ask you to bring this matter to the minister’s attention.
I bring all matters to the minister’s attention. The constituents do not necessarily agree with one another, but I am not going to filter my constituents’ matters. I will represent them to the minister, and I will say to the minister, “This is what the constituent thinks, what he or she believes and what he or she suggests.” It is up to the minister and the experts that are in his directorate to come to a conclusion as to what the best answer will be.
I think that Ms Berry’s approach is an extremely sound one, if you have the opportunity—to get people together and get some consensus. I know that with Hawker we tried from time to time to get some kind of consensus. It did not work in Hawker, but I think that was because we had a pretty rocky start. It did not happen in
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