No more scat

North Strathfield public school, 2 days after calling the school and telling them they had "scat" sprayed on two demountable classrooms.  When they know about it, and they know what to do, things can be fixed quickly.  When they don't know and don't care, it hangs around forever.

And the rest of this entry will also be graffiti-free, emphasising that this blog is about more than petty vandalism.

Abandoned car in Concord.  

The registration expired nearly a year ago, and the number of spiders living in the car suggests it hasn't been driven for some time.  Reported to council tonight.

This to me is an example of a badly designed bike diversion.  Most cyclists will not jink around it and stay in the bike lane - they'll just go through this pinch point with the cars.

The diversion on the other side of the road doesn't have this interesting "jinking" concrete feature.  It seems odd that council have installed it on one side of the road and not the other.  I'm going to ask council to remove it.

Here's a spot where there's no bike diversion lane through a traffic calming device.  The result is that bikes have to leave the safety of the side of the road and mix it up with cars (and cement trucks) as they go through the pinch point.  Some vehicles slow down as they go through these, but I watched a semi-trailer go blasting through one of these just before I took the photo, its tyres scrubbing the kerbs as it went through.  The idea of a separate bike lane through the traffic calming islands is to keep bikes safe by keeping them away from cars.

Another amazing traffic calming island.  I am standing in a bus stop, so I presume the idea is to slow cars down as they come around the corner, so they don't crash into the back of a bus picking up passengers.  Again, it didn't seem to be working.  I watched a van come around the corner so fast, it was almost riding on two wheels.  Again, all it does is compress bikes and cars together in an unforgiving environment.  It wouldn't be that bad if they'd enlarged the gap down the side to make it wide enough for bikes to fit through.

An example of signage that is past its used-by date.  This sign was put up by the Municipality of Concord, which ceased to exist at least 10 years ago.  Note the brand new Canada Bay street sign in front of it.  Council is spending a lot of money refreshing and rebranding all the street signage across our city, which means it must believe that bright, clean signage promotes a good image.  If that's the case, they shouldn't need to be convinced that the old brown sign has to go.

Mending fences

A few months ago, a driver lost control when approaching the Iron Cove Bridge and ran off the road, taking out a fence separating the footpath from the road.

I got an email from the RTA this morning saying that this is normally a council matter, but that the RTA would take care of it.

I think they have already taken care of it - I went past earlier this week and noticed that the bent fence had been fixed.  I just hope that council hasn't fixed it, and now the RTA will come along and wonder what I was on about.

One question that it raises in my mind is what happens in the aftermath of car crashes.  If a car runs off the road and smashes into a bus shelter and destroys it, when the Police attend, do they bother to inform the council or RTA or whoever is responsible that a bit of infrastructure has been damaged?  Or do they just assume that the council will magically find out about it, and take care of it?

Knowing the way out arms of government communicate (or fail to communicate), it would not surprise me to learn that no one talks to nobody.  Because it's all somebody else's problem.

Small things

When I did a ride with BayBUG in December, we rode over the Gladesville Bridge and then Fig Tree Bridge and up into Lane Cove.  When we got to Fig Tree Bridge, quite a few people had to get off their bike to lift it over a tall step where the path met the bridge.  It was the same at the other end.

Either the path has subsided, or the bridge has grown 5 or 6 inches since it was built.  It's a terrible trip hazard for pedestrians, and I wouldn't want to crash into that step at any speed on a bike.  It's a trap for the unwary.

I logged it with the RTA yesterday, asking them to build up the footpath or to install a ramp at both ends of the bridge.  They might come back and say that it is a local council problem, which could be a problem as Lane Cove Council doesn't seem to think much of anyone who isn't in a car.  

It's small things like this that we often overlook, considering them too petty to take up with the appropriate authority.  But many small things soon add up to create a big problem, so I like to try and ensure that the little things are dealt with.  

Werribree watch

I'm linking to another blog called Werribee Watch.  It's a blog written in a different style about different problems, but it demonstrates what I would call "concern for the maintenance of a moral order".  

In our different ways, we're trying to stop society from going to hell in a handbasket.

What will the new tenant be like?

Fitness First are opening a new fitness centre in Five Dock.  The business that previously occupied this site moved out a few months ago, and whilst it has been empty, the vandals have been plying their trade instead.  A collection of tags on both sides (it's on a corner block) has steadily been building up.  I contacted the real estate agent, Time Realty, and tried to get them to clean them off.  Nothing happened.

I contacted Fitness First today via their website (they have a feedback form).  Let's see if they will clean up the exterior of their building before they open for business.

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Apart from that, I also reported a few of the usual graffiti targets to council this morning - vandalised public toilet blocks in two different parks and a vandalised bike storage shed at a railway station.  Business as usual.

Post no vandals

This post office in Concord has had graffiti out the front of it for months.  Australia Post staff walk past it every day on their way to work, and nothing has been done about it.

Same with this post box.  It gets emptied every day, yet the graffiti on it is never cleaned off.

The Australia Post vision states in part:

Our enthusiastic, professional people will build a progressive commercial corporation through a commitment to high levels of customer satisfaction.

As a progressive commercial corporation, Australia Post will make the best use of its assets and earn profits so that it can sustain and develop its business.

Surely a "progressive" corporation would take the view that taking care of its public assets would be a good thing to do - corporate social responsibility and all that.

Then again, I've never met anyone that took the slightest bit of notice of a corporate vision statement.

Scat school followup

I went past North Strathfield public school again yesterday, and the "scat" graffiti is still up on two demountables.


My email to the school pointing this out to them has gone unanswered. There were teachers at the school yesterday, getting ready for the new term. I went into the school and had a look for the office - I wanted to be sure that they knew about it, and had done something about it.

The signage in the school is so hopeless, I was unable to find the office, so I left without seeing anyone about it. I'll try to call them today to follow up.


It appears that they aren't particularly keen on having it removed before their students turn up today - and you have to ask yourself what sort of message that sends to impressionable young minds.


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A partial defence for the school is that they have to jump though a lot of hoops to get graffiti removed. A teacher just can't go outside with a bucket of paint and paint over it. Processes have to be followed.


To start with, the Principal has to make a Police report, and obtain an Event Number.


They take the Event Number and submit an insurance claim.


With the claim submitted, they call the Spotless hotline and lodge a request to have the graffiti removed.


Spotless then send out a man in a van to clean it up.


I doubt that even the most efficient Principal in the state could get that done in 24 hours, which is the recommended timeframe for removing graffiti.


If common sense was applied, a staff member would take photos with a digital camera and then paint straight over it. A Police report could then be filed using the photos. With damage like this, an insurance claim would not be required - about a dollar's worth of paint would fix it. The problem could be removed in less than half an hour.


If the Principal couldn't find a staff member willing to clean up their own school, the job could be passed to Council, who would give this a high priority and remove it within 24 hours (our council at least sees the sense in rapid removal, and treats sensitive sites like this as quickly as possible). At present, Council can't touch the site - the Education Department won't give permission for Council to clean it's property. Some sort of turf war is being waged in the bureaucracy I suspect.


If my kids were at this school, I'd happily paint over it as a member of the P&C.


But common sense is not allowed to prevail. Bureaucracy and process are the order of the day, and I can sometimes understand why busy people just can't be bothered, and why some things take forever to get actioned.

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I just rang the school, and the person who answered the phone had no idea that the school had graffiti on it. They said they'd ask the "GA" (whoever that is) whether anything had been done about it.

Hopefully, the ball is now rolling.

Do Bunnings sell rubbish bins?

This video shows the back of the Bunnings car park in Auburn.  Sorry about the poor quality, and I failed to shoot the entire stretch - the bit I missed was worse than what I filmed.

An amazing quantity of rubbish has blown up against the fence at the back of the car park, and collected between the fence and a berm.  The earth berm blocks the view of this rubbish tip from the car park, so I guess the Bunnings employees have no idea what lurks out the back here.

Bunnings could also argue that this is not their problem - there are other businesses sharing this car park.  That much is true, but Bunnings are the dominant (or anchor) store here, and they do like to project a caring, sharing image.  They could buff that image by pulling some bin liners and rubbish grabbers off the shelves and sending anyone late for work out the back to do a bit of cleaning up.

The right way and the wrong way to fly our flag

Here's how our flag should be flown, whether it is a state flag or the Australian flag.

This is how they fly it at Five Dock police station (and have done so for nearly a year).  It isn't so much flown, as tangled in a tree.  No one seems to have informed the Police that a flag must be taken down at sunset, unless it is floodlit.  I get the feeling they can't take it down, as it is too tangled in the tree.

I finally gave up this morning and contacted Council and asked them to trim the tree (it's on council land).  I hope council has a better grasp of flag etiquette than the Police.

Apart from that, trees elsewhere have been falling down this week. I took this photo on Monday in a park in Auburn - reported it to council this morning.

I took this photo today on the Duck River Cycleway in Auburn - another branch that has blown down over the path.  Must remember to call Auburn council in the morning.  

They had a sign at the end of the cycleway explaining all the activities that are prohibited on the cycleway, but no phone number for council.  If there was one, I would have rung them on the spot.

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Update - rang Auburn Council and told them about the fallen tree.  I had a devil of a time finding a phone number on their website - it's almost as if they don't want people to ring them up.  I also had trouble explaining the location of the fallen tree, as the cycleway in this location doesn't run near any roads - it actually runs under the M4 motorway.  I hope council manage to find it!

Park much improved

Sidney Kitchener Money park in North Strathfield was looking much better today.  I rang Councillor Neil Kenzler about it on Sunday - apart from being a Councillor, I also know that he is involved with Rotary, and Rotary set this park up.  I wasn't sure who was responsible for taking care of it, which is why I rang someone that would know.

I spoke to Neil again on Monday, and he said he'd arranged for it to be sorted out.

Much better.

This would never appear on Top Gear

A stripped Hilux, photographed in Holroyd.  

Even though the car is obviously abandoned (probably stolen), what's the bet the council can't take it away until the rego expires?

What struck me was that at the end of the street, there was a really nice housing development - very posh looking.  I just found it strange that you have this nice looking neighbourhood at one end of the street and this car at the other.  About 20 metres from the Hilux, there was a patch of road where it looked like another car had been torched (the four blobs of melted rubber where the tyres had been, and the scorched bitumen, gave it away).

And right in front of the Hilux, there was this sign about dumping of rubbish.

Somehow, I think the perpetrators really don't care what Parramatta Council thinks about this sort of behaviour.

As it was after 5pm when I went to report this car to Parramatta Council, I tried using their web based reporting system.  It is the worst one that I have used yet.  The website isn't very good either.  

How much does it cost to do nothing?

I have decided to write another letter to RailCorp regarding this bridge in Lilyfield.  I've been trying to get RailCorp to clean it for nearly 7 months, and as you can see, I've failed utterly.

I am going to write to them and ask them to calculate what it has cost to do nothing.  RailCorp employs a number of people to deal with this sort of correspondence - I imagine they are earning $60,000+.  Their manager is probably earning over $100,000.  When you add on-costs of at least 30% (for rent, furniture, computers, phones and so on), they start to get expensive. 

I'll try to calculate an hourly rate for a letter writer.

Start with 52 weeks, then subtract 4 for leave, 1 for sick leave, then 2 more for RDO's (rostered days off) and 1 for training.  That leaves you with 44 useable weeks per year.  Assuming a 35 hour week, that means a letter writer "writes" for 1540 hours per year (which is not really true, since 30-40% of the working day is lost in meetings, coffee breaks, going to the toilet, staring out the window and so on).  If we leave that "wastage rate" out for the moment, and assume a $60,000 salary plus 30% on-costs, and then divide that by 1540 hours, we get an hourly rate of $50.  The manager of the unit would cost double that - $100 per hour.  

If you add in a wastage factor, then the hourly rate for a letter writer goes up to $80 an hour (the amount of time they actually have to write, rather than their total time at work), and the manager is costing $160 per hour.

I have written 3 letters to RailCorp, and had a considered response to each.  Every letter had to be read, entered into the records management system, a response drafted, the draft checked and perhaps rewritten several times before finally being signed and posted.  You could be talking anywhere from 1 to 4 hours per letter, depending on how much wriggling and squirming and non-answering is required.  If we assume that a response to each letter took 4 hours in total, that gives us 12 hours of staff time, or nearly $1,000 in staff costs (assuming $80 per hour).  By the time they give a non-answer to my next letter, the cost will be well over $1,000.

How much would it cost to arrange for a painting contractor to stand on the footpath with a long pole and a roller in order to paint over the worst of the graffiti?  Less than that?

Consider by comparison the approach of the RTA, who have painted and repainted this wall next door perhaps half a dozen times.  The RTA doesn't shirk its responsibility and make excuses - it just takes action and sends out a short email afterwards saying, "Done", which is all I want.

As you can see in the above photo, graffiti has already started reappearing after the most recent coat of RTA paint, and the vandals did their bit for the environment by leaving the empty spray can behind.

They always seem to leave their cans behind - the place is littered with them, and they're so old, they're rusting.  Whilst the RTA is doing a great job of painting over graffiti, it is not doing such a splendid job of picking up after the littering vandals.  But that still puts them a long way in front of RailCorp.

Dump the nappies and run

I had yet another look under the railway bridge at Rhodes this week.  The place is still a mess, with rubbish strewn all over the ground, dumped chemical or oil containers and what appears to be a large engine.

That's a nappy (used), and that is poo that has come out of it - this was in the middle of the car park.  

It's going to take a small crane to get rid of this engine.

Some of the paint, oil and/or chemical drums.

It is a rubbish dump in all but name.

All this, just a stone's throw from apartments that can cost over a million dollars.

Comparing councils

Today I went along the Cooks River, which took me through Cantebury, Tempe, Burwood, Marrickville, Strathfield and some other suburbs.  The difference between most of those suburbs and Canada Bay was marked - like chalk and cheese.  Canada Bay is a shining jewel by comparison with most of them.  The state of our city reflects great credit on its residents and businesses, their elected representatives on Council, and our Council staff.

The above photo is pretty typical of what you'll see along the Cooks River.  There are huge graffiti "pieces" all over the place, and no effort seems to be put into cleaning any of them up - or the thousands of graffiti tags that coat every vertical surface.

We don't see this sort of thing much in Canada Bay.  Putting something like this up is obviously a much more time consuming process than quickly spraying or writing a tag, which means one of several things:

• Our vandals have no "artistic talent"
• Our vandals are more worried about getting caught, so they have to throw graffiti up as quickly as possible, or
• Our businesses, residents and Council are much more aggressive in removing graffiti, making it less worthwhile to put a lot of effort into a big "piece"

I don't know what the answer is.  I'm just glad I live in Canada Bay, where people care about creating a nicer environment to live in.

What will it take to get through to these people?

Over the last few weeks, I have reported 16 kiosks with graffiti to Energy Australia.  To their credit, they have done a good job of quickly tackling them and removing the graffiti (or painting over it).  The time it takes from logging a call with them to action appears to have been substantially reduced over the last six months.  It shows that management might be starting to "get it".

Then again, maybe not.

I went past their depot in Homebush today.  Parked in the back corner was this caravan, which is presumably some sort of mobile site office.

It's covered in graffiti.

I can understand Energy Australia having trouble tackling graffiti on kiosks that are spread all over the state, but this is parked in their depot yard.  It's presumably been vandalised whilst out on site, towed back to the depot and then left in this condition.

What's the bet that if I failed to take this up with Energy Australia on Tuesday, they'd tow it out to another site in this condition without batting an eyelid?

No longer worth $3,999

Spotted outside a car yard this morning.

Oops.  

Someone had better update that price sticker.  Removing the "3" from the front might help.  I hope this is not the result of a test drive!

Thomas the Tank Engine never looked like this

Another rail bridge covered in graffiti - this time in Tempe.  This one is definitely on a running line - a goods train rumbled over it just after I took this photo, and it's also used by lots of passenger trains.

Surely you don't need a closedown to paint under the running lines?  I don't know about you, but I'm starting to see a pattern here - a pattern of not cleaning rail bridges.

As for the trains, a freight train went through the station when I was there.  I took 10 photos of the wagons, each photo showing 2 different wagons.  Every wagon had graffiti on it, and I didn't see the whole train.  You get the picture though - the train was a big mess.

These wagons are neither cheap nor easy to repaint.  What you are looking at here is tens of thousands of dollars damage - if not hundreds of thousands.  I don't know what the company policy is with regard to graffiti (the wagons seemed to be owned by the Manildra Group) - whether they bother to report this sort of thing to the Police, and estimate the cost of the damage.

This sort of thing just adds to the cost of a packet of flour.  Graffiti is not a "victimless crime" when the cost of it flows through to the consumer and hits the poor in the hip pocket.