Wednesday, November 26, 2008

RailCorp, North Strathfield and other assorted messes

There is a "dead zone" where Parramatta Road goes under the motorway and railway line at North Strathfield.  It is one of those bleak, unloved dumps that has very little pedestrian and car traffic, and is thus a haven for graffiti.  The buildings backing onto the rail corridor at this point are thickly coated in graffiti, as is every brick wall and bridge abutment.  

The photo below shows a stairway that leads from Queen St down to Parramatta Raod - this is next to the "Arnott's Bridge" on Parramatta Road.  


The brick walls of the stairway and almost invisible under coat after coat of graffiti.

Some of it is not very polite.


The concrete traffic barriers that line Queen St at this spot are also covered in graffiti.


The roadsides are littered with beer bottles - there are 8 in this photo.  I've reported all of this to council using their web based reporting system.  I am not sure if this is a council problem or not, but they will send it on to the RTA if it is their problem.


This photo shows graffiti on equipment cabinets within the rail reservation - these cabinets probably have something to do with the signalling system.  There is also graffiti all over the back of the large grey sign - I am not sure if that is within railway property or not.


The last letter that I received from RailCorp said that they normally need to undertake a closedown to remove graffiti.  That might be true of difficult to access structures such as bridges, but surely it shouldn't apply to equipment cabinets?  In the photo below, taken about 300m up the line, the red arrow is pointing to a large patch of graffiti that is well away from the rail lines, and on the right, you can see a cluster of 8 or so rail staff in orange vests, standing beside the rail line - a very busy rail line.  


Here we have another view of the rail staff and some of their vehicles - note their proximity to the rail lines.


This photo shows the exact spot (the gate location is on the sign on the right), with the staff in the background.


I put these photos up to show that RailCorp staff can work alongside active rail lines in the middle of the day, so long as there is sufficient clearance from the track and overhead lines and they've done their risk analysis and so on.  If these staff can work beside the track, undertaking surveys or maintenance inspections or whatever, then why can't someone go into the same location with a bucket of paint and clean up graffiti?  

1 comment:

thegoons said...

Did Council action the request to cleanup the stairway near Arnotts?