Thursday, February 24, 2011

Getting rid of cycling hazards

I ride to work fairly regularly, and every now and then, I find large patches of broken glass strewn across a bike lane - the result of a crash causing a broken headlight, or a thief smashing a car window to break into a car. One thing is certain - when this happens, no one ever bothers to sweep up the broken glass. It is a classic case of  "they will take care of it", allowing everyone else to walk away and wash their hands of it.


I've cycled around this glass every morning so far this week. I've been following another cyclist every time, and the bloke in front has always had the courtesy to point the glass out to those behind (cyclists have an entire suite of hand signals to point out hazards to each other). Hundreds of cyclists have had to swerve around this glass to avoid a puncture - but have any of them bothered to do something about it (apart from pointing to it as they go past)?

I stopped for 10 seconds to take this photo. I then wrote an email to Leichhardt Council telling them where it is, what the problem is and what I want them to do about it (ie, street name and number, broken glass, please clean it up).

I've already had a response back from Council with a job number and a note that the job has been passed to the Infrastructure and Service Delivery Division.

It took me about 10 times longer to upload this photo and write a blog entry describing what I did.

It's really not that hard.

2 comments:

King Crack said...

It is good that you informed council but if the concern is damage to your tyre would it not have been bettre to sweep the glass up or even to the side and reported it?

Not Somebody Else's Problem said...

Sweep it up with what? I don't carry a broom with me, and it covered the area of a large car.

Council had cleaned it up before 7am this morning - less than 24 hours after reporting it.