Page 636 - Week 02 - Thursday, 16 February 2017
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When resurfacing of the territory’s roads does occur, for nearly 85 per cent of the time, as measured in square metres, this resurfacing is with chip seal, not asphalt, which is certainly a more attractive option from the perspective of cost. Chip seal, however, requires fairly high traffic for the loose gravel to be compacted into a suitable surface. This can be a real problem when this resurfacing method is used in low traffic municipal streets such as cul-de-sacs. In 2014 Minister Rattenbury admitted that TAMS was no longer using chip seal in the car parks at shopping centres because of its “obvious difficulties”. Yet these same obvious difficulties occur equally in the quieter suburban streets where chip seal is still being used.
Failing roads, frequent repairs, the use of unsuitable resurfacing materials and disruptions to commutes are just some of the problems Canberrans face most days as a consequence of poor planning. Complaints concerning other infrastructure issues that accompany municipal roads in particular are also raised with me and other members of this Assembly. The city’s footpaths are often in a shocking state of disrepair, and, as we learnt in this chamber just last year, there is no formal inspection program for paths, meaning that, unlike for roads, where a maintenance schedule exists, even if it is neglected, there is, in effect, no formal programmed maintenance for these important structures.
Canberra residents, of course, can contact government services and report cracked and uneven footpaths, and I have spoken to a number of constituents who have done just that. But what happens thereafter seems to be anybody’s guess. More than once, residents have pointed out to me sections of a footpath that, after having been reported, have had their breaks and cracks spray-painted, presumably to identify them for repair. In each case the paint had been there for so long that it was nearly completely faded, yet the footpaths remained cracked and uneven. Such a situation creates a very difficult and often unsafe situation for normal pedestrians. Try to imagine being in a wheelchair or pushing a pram.
Just last week I spoke with an elderly constituent who lives in a street with no footpaths at all. This good woman wants to be out and about to get some exercise but relies upon a walking frame and finds it difficult to do so considering the rough, uneven nature of the road surface and the fact that she has to share it with cars. This is not okay. Elderly Canberrans who want to be active should not feel that they have no safe surfaces to walk on. Road users should not have to worry that the territory’s poorly maintained roads will claim another of their tyres. Residents of this city should not have to face the frustration that comes from inadequate repairs to the streets in their suburbs.
We can do better than this. The poor condition of Canberra’s roads is just one symptom of what seems to many Canberrans to be systemic neglect on the part of the ACT government to maintain the infrastructure of the city’s suburbs. I note that many of the large tree branches that came down around my electorate as a result of the windstorm on 13 January this year are still lying along our streets, across our crumbling footpaths and in our neglected parks. These same parks spend much of the year with overgrown grass obscuring their ageing, broken playground equipment and no longer functioning bubblers. This general shabbiness does not befit the nation’s capital.
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