Snap, Send, Solve

A very handy iPhone app called Snap Send Solve is now available. I've installed it, but haven't actually used it in the field yet. It won't be long now before I give it a go. 

The City of Sydney has set up an arts program for brightening up the city's laneways. I've been keeping an eye on the art in Dungate Lane - it's a big improvement, but some idiot vandals have been ripping bits of it down or spray painting over the top of it. Here's a bit more art being glued to the wall. 

Another abandoned car - the rego on this one ran out in January, and it's been sitting here for months. Interestingly enough, I found out recently that the Mayor lives in this area - I wonder if he's ever noticed it, and bothered to report it? It's not like this particular suburb is very large - it's about 3 streets long and 4 streets wide, and this is on the main road leading out of this small suburb. I guess he has other fish to fry...

The Greens were at it again in the closing week of the election - this time, they put up a banner on the pedestrian bridge over the City West Link. It promptly came adrift on a windy day, and was flapping across the path.

This came within a whisker of blowing into my bike wheel as I went past - which would have brought me down. That would have been rather ironic - Green banner injures cyclist. I would have thought that the Greens would put up a banner where it would appeal to cyclists (more their target audience) rather than car drivers on the road below - but what would I know? I wrote to the RTA and asked them whether this banner was authorised - you have to get permission from the RTA and book a spot on these bridges if you want to put up a banner like this.

After it blew down, the Greens tied it back up. However, they put it in a position where it blocked visibility around the corner of the bridge. When I came past the next day, I couldn't see around the corner, and almost slammed into a pedestrian coming up the path. More irony - Greens nearly cause cyclist and pedestrian to crash. I don't believe they were thinking very hard when they put this banner up.

The engineers at Leichhardt Council weren't thinking very hard when they built this bike path extension around the Bay. I wrote to both the Council and Mayor before construction started and asked them to ensure that there was sufficient drainage - the previous extension is prone to flooding as well. They read my second letter (the Mayor never bothered to respond), but utterly failed to do anything about it. The new extension floods even faster than the previous extension!

Here's the Greens posters in a rail underpass. Thanks to a comment on my last post, it's clear that these are illegal and can attract a hefty fine. I'm going to write to Leichhardt Council and ask them to take action - it will be interesting to see if they do anything, given that the Mayor is a Green and he might yet become the new MP for this area. Will they take action against their own, or will they allow them to get away with breaking the law?

Some more views of the vandalised art works in Dungate Lane in the city.

Trashing the neighbourhood

RailCorp are doing work on the old goods line through Lilyfield, turning it into a light rail extension. The area around one of their worksites has been thoroughly trashed by vandals, and it appears that they broke into the worksite over the weekend and pushed the site's portable toilets over. I wrote to RailCorp about the rubbish within and around the site last week - when I went past yesterday, the area was much cleaner, and I noticed three full bin liners at the gate waiting to be picked up. It's a pity that I had to ask RailCorp to clean up their own site - someone from management should have been visiting regularly, and if they were, they might have noticed the sea of McDonalds bags, drink bottles, coffee cups etc inside and outside the fence.

The walls under the railway bridge are a favourite spot for the illegal posting of posters. Last week, posters for the Greens went up. By yesterday, half of them had been torn down or fallen down - along with several other non-political posters. The rubbish from the posters was all over the footpath, and had started washing into the street.

It's a similar story at one of the overbridges along the City West Link.

I've left a comment on Jamie Parker's website, which ironically states "Help me improve Balmain, Leichhardt, Glebe and Haberfield":

Yes, I'd love you to improve the Lilyfield area. Recently, Greens posters have been illegally put up on RailCorp and RTA bridges. Most of these posters are now lying on the footpath or in the gutter as great wads of rubbish. How about going back and cleaning up after yourself, and stop using public assets for your advertising. Stop treating our environment as a rubbish tip.

The state election is this weekend. The most common form of political advertising is coreflutes nailed onto power poles. What I've noticed from recent elections is that by the weekend after the election, Labor and the Liberals will have taken most of them down. There's always the odd one that is missed, but they manage to get 95%+ very quickly. Sometimes, most of them come down on the Sunday after the election.

I'll be keeping an eye on the Greens coreflutes to see if they bother to take them down as rapidly and comprehensively. After the 2007 federal election, I had to write to them two months after the election to ask them to clean up their rubbish. They're good at putting it up, and hopeless at taking it down.

Slightly overheated car and boat

I spotted a burned out car in Lilyfield on the way home last night. When I circled around to have a closer look, I found this burned out boat as well.

The bloke in the photo was quite blasé about the wreck - his input was, "They burn them here all the time and then push them into the canal".

Where I spotted it from - it stood out pretty clearly from across the canal. Will be interested to know if anyone else bothered to report it - I emailed Leichhardt Council when I got home, and rang the Police Assistance Line.

How Green is this - not.

One thing I've noticed after the last few elections is that the worst party by far at cleaning up their election material is the Greens. Their coreflutes hang around on power poles for months after the election is finished - at least Labor and the Liberals generally have theirs down within a few days. The Greens were so hopeless after the Kevin07 election, I wrote to them asking to remove their rubbish from our neighbourhoods - which they did. Goodness knows why they needed prompting. Probably memory loss from too many hits on the bong.

Someone at Greens HQ must have overindulging in the weed recently, because you'd have to be on drugs to think that illegally sticking up posters on public property is a good idea.

Especially when those posters have a bad habit of peeling off the wall and blowing around as rubbish.

We've just had Clean Up Australia Day - and straight after, the Greens do their best to trash public property and to litter the environment. What a pack of hypocrites.

Clean Up results

The Sunday just gone was Clean Up Australia Day. I put my name down to help at a site in a housing commission estate. This is what we found when we got there - I'm not sure if it was ever picked up - the site organiser didn't show up, so we went and helped out elsewhere. 

There wasn't much rubbish to pick up at the next site, but I did find a damaged park bench (which I've reported to Council). Here's what gets me about damage like this - Council staff or contractors visit this park every week or two to mow the lawns and empty the bins. You'd think that they'd report something obvious like damaged furniture - and in some cases, they do. But in too many, they don't. There are nearly 300 Council employees - more than enough to spot just about every maintenance issue and abandoned car in our city.

This is a systemic problem that is present in just about every government body these days. Employees only concern themselves with the items contained within their narrow function, and to hell with everything else. Leaders that have their act together look for and recognise these sorts of problems and act on them before they become big problems. If our leaders were doing what they are paid to do, I wouldn't be doing this. I don't expect the Mayor to be filling in pot holes and picking up litter and mowing the grass - but I do expect him to be ensuring that the Council is performing at maximum efficiency and effectiveness in delivering services to residents. When I see things like this, it makes me wonder if they've really got a grip on things.

Abandoned truck in Chiswick, spotted whilst walking between the two Clean Up sites.

Abandoned van, spotted whilst walking home. This is the 2nd time I've reported this one - the owner registered it last time, but hasn't moved it since, and the rego lapsed back in Jan.

This empty space is the sign of success - it used to contain two Jags that had been rusting on trailers for a decade. Council removed them last month.

This wall made it into the Daily Telegraph last week. The RTA came along and painted it on Thursday the 3rd of March. This is how it looked at 1640hrs on the same Thursday.

This is how it looked 5 minutes later after 3 kids on scooters, no older than 12, had been and gone. They might have been as young as 8. They're so illiterate, they couldn't even spell "Police" - but sadly, they knew how to spell "fuck". I've reported them to the "Poice".

And this was how the wall looked on Monday the 7th. Sadly, it looks like all this was sprayed on during Clean Up Australia Day. Oh, the irony.

Strathfield vs Canada Bay

I was asked last week to write an opinion piece for the Strathfield Scene on graffiti. Before submitting it, I asked a few friends to eyeball it and provide feedback. One said, "Gee, you're pretty harsh on the Strathfield mayor, and you must really like the Canada Bay mayor".

Actually, no.

If the mayor of Canada Bay was doing his job properly, this blog wouldn't exist. I'd have nothing to do. The fact that I have spent the last three years running around trying to clean up the neighbourhood is a savage indictment on his administration.

The photo below shows his campaign office from his 2003 election bid. It's on Great North Road in Five Dock. It was vacant for a long time, and was also covered in graffiti for a long time. I finally contacted the mayor just before Christmas in 2008 and asked him to call the owner and get it removed (this was before Council changed their policy regarding graffiti removal). If he really cared about cleaning things up, surely he would have noticed that the building with his name plastered all over it was vandalised and an eyesore?

As for the Strathfield vs Canada Bay comparisons, we got lucky when the state government provided grants a few years ago to buy graffiti cleaning trucks. Strathfield didn't. What annoys me is that a very effect graffiti removal program was shutdown after just one year - if the state government was serious about graffiti removal, it would have provided grants to councils every year, and Strathfield would have its own truck by now - and the Strathfield area would be much cleaner.

I regularly say good things about Canada Bay council - but when I do so, I am endorsing the work of the front line staff that go out every day and clean things up.

Going, going, gone

That pile of rubbish that I reported yesterday - as of this morning, it's gone. It took Leichhardt Council staff less than 24 hours to get rid of it. Thumbs up to the staff that had to clean up after the low lifes that dumped it.

Funnily enough, I got an email at 7.15am this morning to say that a job had been registered to pick it up - that was after it had already been cleaned up.

What a load of rubbish

I spotted this pile of illegally dumped rubbish on the way to work - it wasn't there yesterday morning. I've just emailed Leichhardt Council to let them know about it. I hope Council sort through it and find something that provides a clue as to who did it.

To think that it's Clean Up Australia Day this Sunday, and people are doing stuff like this.

This load was dumped right outside one of our rowing clubs, and there were dozens and dozens of rowers using this car park this morning. I wonder if any one of them has bothered to report this as well? Or is it just somebody else's problem?

Quantity has a quality all of its own

People sometimes ask me, "Why do you bother with all this trivial stuff?"

Simple - quantity has a quality all of its own (as Stalin used to say).

What I mean by that is on their own, small problems are just that - small problems. However, when you add them all up, they become a big problem. If you take care of the little problems, one by one, you stop the entire place from turning into a dump. Just look at the bedroom of your average teenager - if they go for a week without picking up their dirty clothes, throwing out their rubbish, putting clean clothes away and taking any plates and glasses back to the kitchen, it quickly becomes an absolute disaster area.

I don't want my suburb to turn into the equivalent of a teenager's bedroom, so I pay attention to the small stuff. Look after the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves.

Quick cleanup

About this time yesterday morning, I emailed Leichhardt Council to let them know there was a big patch of broken glass on Liliyfield Rd.

7am this morning - broken glass was gone.

Not all clean ups are that quick, but they'll never happen at all if people don't know that something needs fixing.

I had to drop the eldest off at guitar school last night - on the way home, I noticed that a car had taken out a sign on a roundabout in Five Dock - the bumper was wrapped around the sign post, and the post was almost flat against the ground. Even though I have the memory of a goldfish, I managed to remember it when I got home five minutes later and quickly dashed off an email to Canada Bay Council before I forgot about it. Total time required - about one minute. Where's the problem, what's the problem, what needs to be done about it.

The driver of the car in question didn't bother to clean up after themselves - and I bet they certainly didn't even entertain the thought of reporting the damage that they'd done - and the bill for that damage will be picked up by local ratepayers.

Smashing fence

Either this fence around the Bay Run has started falling apart from old age, or someone has come past and kicked the horizontal poles off the uprights - you can see one lying in the dirt towards the left. A few more ended up in the water. I spotted this nearly two weeks ago - only just got around to reporting it tonight. Better late than never. This report went to Ashfield Council via email - took about a minute to find the email address on their website, attach the photo and let them know where and what the problem was.

Since Ashfield Council haven't fixed it over the last two weeks, I guess I'm safe in assuming that no one has bothered to tell them that the fence is all smashed up.

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.

It's all about you

I've had a bit of media exposure this week, so I thought I'd better do a post for people that might have dropped in here as a result.

For starters, I am not solely focused on graffiti. I report a lot of graffiti, but that's only because there is a lot of it around to report. I also do my best to get rid of pot holes, fallen trees, abandoned cars, piles of rubbish and broken or faded signage. Yes, that sounds like a lot of work - but it isn't really. I put in about an hour a week most weeks - if I'm lucky. Writing these blog posts often takes more time than photographing and reporting graffiti, abandoned cars etc.

You may notice that my name doesn't appear anywhere on this blog - even though it's now pretty easy to find out who I am. This blog is not about me - it's about you, and what you can do to "make the world a better place". Sounds awfully sappy doesn't it - it's so corny, writing that makes me feel sick.

It's only two weeks until Clean Up Australia Day - March 6th. Hundreds of thousands of Australians will participate for a few hours, helping to clean up their neighbourhood. I applaud that, and I try and take part each year. However, what about the other 364 days of the year? Why do we turn a blind eye on every other day of the year to the mess that surrounds us? Why do we find it acceptable on 364 days of the year to ignore things that need fixing, treating them as "somebody else's problem?"

I think a big part of it is because we've been conditioned to think that "they will take care of it" - "they" being some mysterious arm of government that is all-seeing and all-knowing. Well, "they" don't exist. (If you think "they" exist, put some tinfoil on your head and remember to take your pills). "They" won't fix anything - if you want something fixed, it's up to YOU to do something about it.

Thanks to the Internet, it's pretty easy to do something these days. Here's what you do:

1. Take a photo of the problem
2. Email the photo to the responsible government department, along with a description of the location and the problem, and ask them to fix it up
3. Remember to say "Please"

Every single bit of government that you might need to contact has a web site these days, and every web site has a "contact us" page or an email address for you to use. Use them. They also have phone numbers - I do ring from time to time, but I find that sending in a nice colour photo and a message in writing is more effective.

Don't feel embarrased about doing that - about asking (or nagging) a government agency or your council for help. Just remember, the rates and taxes that we pay are used to pay the salaries of the people working for those government departments, and they are employed to deliver services to us. About 95% of the time, they will actually help you - and they'll sometimes amaze you with how quickly they can fix things. I've spotted a problem on the way to work, reported it an hour later, and gone past it on the way home and found that it's been fixed. (That doesn't happen very often - but it does happen).

Your Council probably has a Service Desk that has been setup solely to look after you (and the other 59,999 residents in your area). Their job is to help you with stuff like this - if you speak to them nicely and treat them with respect, they'll do their best to get the problem fixed. They are humans too - they might even live in the same suburb as you, and they'll thank you for helping to tidy up their neighbourhood as well.

There are times of course when the whole system breaks down, or you find yourself dealing with an utter roadblock. I've dealt with a few of them over the last 3 years - in almost every case, I've found a way to go around or over them. Persisence generally pays off. Just remember to put everything in writing, and try and make an argument that sounds sane and reasonable - I've posted multiple examples throughout this blog. Some of the correspondence that I've had over the years reads a bit like Fawlty Towers at times. At other times, emails or electronic forms have gone missing (eaten by the ghost in the machine) - but all I do then is send it again.

Here's one tip though - almost every government department is absolutely useless at telling you when the problem has been fixed. Most of them simply send a crew out to deal with the problem, and then never follow up to tell you that your issue has been taken care of. If you don't hear back from them, it's  not because they're not doing something about fixing it - it's just that most of them don't have a system to "close the loop". The only way you'll find out that your problem has been fixed is if you go back to the site and have a look for yourself. Give it a couple of weeks - if nothing has happened, send them a follow up message and ask what's going on.

Using Twitter to clean up a city

I recieved a very interesting comment from San Francisco with links to a Twitter feed and a blog dedicated to cleaning up the Mission District. I'd never thought of using Twitter for this - thanks for the tip.

Graffiti time lapse

A wall over the period of less than one month. This was painted out around Christmas time by the RTA, who now regularly paint this without any prompting.

Six days later.

7 days later.

12 days later.

13 Days later.

23 days later.

It doesn't take long, does it?

Results

Ask, and you shall recieve.

The RTA has painted over large slabs of graffiti along the CityWest link. They've also cleaned a number of traffic light cabinets in Drummoyne.

RailCorp have painted over bridge graffiti in Rhodes.

Sydney Water have cleaned up one of their pumping stations in Ryde.

Canada Bay Council have towed away a handful of abandoned cars and removed graffiti from some local playgrounds. Leichhardt council have also removed an abandoned car that I spotted recently on their patch.

Energy Australia have been busy cleaning their kiosks.

It's just a matter of telling them where the problem lies and asking them to fix it.

What do hippies get up to?

I'll start on a lighter note for once - an amusing bit of graffiti under a road bridge in Rhodes. The caption says "Happy New Year (cause U no wat hippies get up 2)". It's nice to see a mildly amusing piece of graffiti once in a blue moon.

Unfortunately, the rest tends to be like this. "Cheers c*nts".

I'm not sure who is responsible for cleaning this up - it's a bureaucratic Bermuda Triangle. This used to be a railway bridge, but it's been converted into a cycle/pedestrian bridge. The question is - who owns it now? Is it still a RailCorp asset, or is it now with the RTA, or the Ministry of Transport, or what? I'm going to have to write a letter to get to the bottom of this one if my website inquiry gets nowhere.

This is the underside of the railway bridge - there is a new railway bridge next to the old one, and this is definitely a RailCorp problem. Issues like this can be reported via the CityRail website. There is a railway underpass near one of the stations that I use from time to time - vandals have sprayed paint over all the light fittings, so it's pitch black after dark. That makes it easier for them to vandalise the tunnel or to rob people, so I've finally remembered to report it to CityRail.

Not long now until I'll have reported 150 vandalised Energy Australia kiosks like this one.

Graffiti in Rydalmere - is it 'artistic' to say that "Fems love big penis"?

Or that "Jared is gay"?

Interesting message on this barrier - "The world is ours". That's a nice thought - now, how about keeping it neat and tidy instead of wandering around damaging and spray painting everything in sight?

This team of vandals have thoughtfully left their names on the back of the barrier. Amazing how much damage 11 teens with a few spray cans can do. The entire area is littered with their tags - and this is a new housing development that really only opened last year. They've been very busy.

The new walking track along the river has a dozen or so street lights overhead - every single one of them has been smashed. Is it the same group that's done all the tagging? Maybe, maybe not.

There used to be a plaque on this rock commemorating.... something. I suspect it's been stolen. I've let Council know.

The summer holidays are always a peak time for graffiti, vandalism and malicious damage. I've seen a number of street signs around the place that have been bent partially or fully over - some have been snapped off. That's not the result of being hit by a car - that's teenagers grabbing the pole and pulling it over. I reported the one below to Canada Bay Council via email on Sunday - they fixed it on Monday. That's another couple of hundred bucks that the ratepayers will have to pick up the tab for.

Graffiti on a Sydney Water pumping station. 2116 is the post code for Rydalmere. I've read a bit about gangs putting up tags with their post code, but this is the first one I have seen east of Parramatta. I've reported this via the Sydney Water web site.

Finally, a problem caused by engineering "vandals". A trench has been dug across the road here between the jetty on the other side of the road and the park behind where I'm standing. When they've filled it in, the crew has either run out of tar, or they've been in a hurry to get home. The surface of the refilled trench is at least an inch below the rest of the road in some places. It's not so bad if you hit that in a car, but it's an almighty crash when you hit it on a bike - and this is one of the busiest bike paths in the inner west.

I emailed Leichhardt Council this morning and asked them to put a bit more tar in the trench - they've logged it and passed it over to their maintenance division for action.