Australia Post - tagged to death

This post is a collection of Australia Post photos that I have put up previously, starting with my all-time favourite - "dicktation".

I reported one of the mailboxes shown here to Australia Post back in May.  I got a letter back saying that it would be cleaned up.  It will be August pretty soon, and I drove past it earlier this week and found that it was still in the same miserable condition that it was in back in May.  Nearly three months, and no action yet.  That tells you everything about where their priorities lie.

Here is what I don't get.  Every single one of these assets is visited by an Australia Post employee or contractor every working day.  Unless Australia Post is employing blind people to empty their mailboxes, they must be noticing the graffiti.  If we accept that Australia Post is not allowing blind people to drive their mail vans, then why aren't their employees and/or contractors reporting it?  If they are, why isn't management doing something about it?

Even if it isn't being reported internally, surely Australia Post managers drive around enough to notice the odd vandalised mailbox or Post Office?  They might not have to drive for work purposes, but don't they notice this kind of thing when they are driving around on the weekend on personal business?  Or do they just not care about it if they spot it on a Saturday, because they are not on duty at the time?

Five Dock graffiti survey

Survey

(This is taken from the written submission that I sent to Canada Bay Council last week.  My apologies if it comes out a bit rough - it is a straight copy and paste from Word.)

I started with a map from www.whereis.com, and selected the area bounded by Lyons Rd to the North and Kings Rd to the South, West St to the West and Waterview St to the East.  I decided to survey Five Dock because I felt it was no better or worse than any other commercial area in Canada Bay, and I live within walking distance.

 

According to a BOCARS report, a survey like this was done by the Police and Newcastle Council in 2006, and as far as I am aware, it is the only example that has ever been undertaken.  Council might like to suggest the idea of a survey of an area like North Strathfield to the Police.

I then divided the area into zones, and surveyed one zone at a time.  Each zone took about half an hour to walk around. 

Before setting out, I used the “photo” feature in www.whereis.com to estimate the number of blocks per street.  This would be easier to perform with a proper cadastral map, but I used the only thing that I had available. 

I then walked the streets of each zone, up one side and down the other, and marked down the number of “fresh” and “old” tags per property frontage, as well as the property type (commercial or residential). 

Zone 3
Sector	FRESH	OLD	TOTAL	TYPE	COMMENT
A1	2			1
A2	1			1
A3				1
A4	1			1
A5	5	1		1
A6				1
A7				1
A8	1			1
A9	5	1		1
A10				1

 

For the purpose of this survey, a “fresh” tag was one that was clearly visible and stood out.  An “old” tag was one where an effort had been made to clean it off or paint it over.  A fresh tag could be a year old – you could also think of them as tags where an attempt had been made to clean them vs where no attempt had been made.

 I am not an expert in interpreting tags, so my tag count is +/- 10%. 

 The data to date:

 

Summary info - zone 1	Number	Percentage
Number of commercial premises	17	24%
Number of residential premises	55	76%
Total premises	72
Number with "new" graffiti	12	17%
Number with "old" graffiti	8	11%
Commercial premises with some graffiti	13	76%
Residential premises with some graffiti	5	7%
Total with some graffiti	18	25%
Total number of tags	95
Summary info - zone 2	Number	Percentage
Number of commercial premises	22	44%
Number of residential premises	28	56%
Total premises	50
Number with "new" graffiti	11	22%
Number with "old" graffiti	9	18%
Commercial premises with some graffiti	13	59%
Residential premises with some graffiti	3	11%
Total with some graffiti	16	32%
Total number of tags	55
Summary info - zone 3	Number	Percentage
Number of commercial premises	93	100%
Number of residential premises	0	0%
Total premises	93
Number with "new" graffiti	44	47%
Number with "old" graffiti	36	39%
Commercial premises with some graffiti	52	56%
Residential premises with some graffiti	0	0%
Total with some graffiti	52	56%
Total number of tags	151
Total to date	Number	Percentage
Number of commercial premises	132	61%
Number of residential premises	83	39%
Total premises	215
Number with "new" graffiti	67	31%
Number with "old" graffiti	53	25%
Commercial premises with some graffiti	78	59%
Residential premises with some graffiti	8	10%
Total with some graffiti	86	40%
Total number of tags	301

Note that many premises have “old” and “new” graffiti on them, so the total number of premises with “some” graffiti is not the sum of those with old and new graffiti.  

Also note that a property fronting onto two streets would be counted twice – so corner blocks, or blocks that run right through to a lane at the back have both frontages counted.  For this reason, the number of commercial and residential properties will be higher than the number of blocks in the area. 

As far as I am aware, only a handful of the above tags were found on property that is the responsibility of Council.  It is therefore interesting to compare the results of this survey with the official statistics for the whole of Canada Bay:

 

• 732 incidents in 14 months
• 63% Council – 454 incidents
• 24% private – 176 incidents
• 11% commercial – 102 incidents

 Compare these two statistics:

 For the whole Council area, over a 14 month period, businesses reported 102 incidents.

 In a single 2 day survey period, covering half of the Five Dock commercial area, 78 possible incidents were sighted.  Assuming that the other half of the Five Dock commercial area is as bad, it means that just one small area of the Council could contain as many graffiti incidents as were officially reported by businesses in a 14 month period.  And this does not account for the new graffiti that is continually being applied.

The survey enabled me to produce a site map of where graffiti is being applied.  I have lifted this idea from a map of Cholera produced by Dr John Snow in 1854 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Snow_(physician)

(map)

 The red bars represent the number of tags per property, ranging from 1 tag in this map to 28.  A map of the complete area would probably reveal the pathways that vandals are taking (assuming they are creatures of habit) and the sites most in need of a cleanup.  This shows East and West streets, just south of Lyons Road.  An intelligence collecting exercise like this is much more likely to reveal the trouble spots than the official statistics.  All the statistics tell you is who is diligent in reporting graffiti – they don’t really tell you where it is actually occurring.

  

CPTED

 I didn’t really “get” CPTED until I did the survey of Five Dock and really looked at what structures were being vandalised vs those that weren’t.  It becomes pretty self explanatory once you have a look at 100 buildings and walls and see which ones have tags and which ones don’t. 

 Council could run some simply workshops in each commercial area, taking a group of business owners and managers for a one hour walk around the precinct and showing real life examples of designs that attract graffiti vs those that repel it.  It doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.