Councillor Don Palmer Providing Local Leadership & Working for You

Anger is mounting again along the railway corridor runnin through Goodwood, Millswood, Clarence Park & Black Forest.

Two issues seem prominent currently from my conversations with residents, being noise or sound abatement and room to fit the bikeway within the corridor not along Cromer Parade.

The first is residents do not believe undertakings late last year by the Project Director of the Goodwood Junction project that residents will not be worse off from a noise abatement point of view when the three projects are completed.

Residents in Devon Street South have protested the level of noise they are currently experiencing with the works. They are recognising that unless houses are rebuilt where removed for the Brownhill Creek Culvert Diversion are not rebuilt then the the buffer offered by those houses will no longer exist. The logical extension of that reasoning is the sound will increase for them.

Residents along Cromer Parade Millswood likewise believe that audible warning signals adjacent Fairfax street and the access to SASMEE Park, with the Seaford train coming every 6 minutes (12 minutes either way), will likewise impact on them given there is no audible warning now. So, in other words the sound will increase, unlike previous assurances.

One Cromer Parade resident simply was told, well the warnings will have to be audible as the oncoming train from the north will not be visible until it reaches this crossing. It is an Occ’ Health issue. The residents are not arguing this and understand it but believe DPTI either do not understand their (the residents) point or are choosing to ignore it.

The second issue concerns the Greenways Bikeway. Residents have been informed that the bikeway simply must be on Cromer Parade as the width of the corridor along this section is not wide enough to accomodate the path. Head just 500 metres south along the corridor and we find that the width of the corridor between the Clarence Park & Emerson Railway Stations is the same as that section adjacent Cromer Parade and guess what? There is room for the bikeway here and this section includes within it an open stormwater drain tresspassing into the available corridor.

So again residents are questioning if there are being treated fairly by DPTI.

Hard to argue with them on the available evidence.

On an aside I hear residents at last night’s GRAG committee were less than pleased with a number of aspects including at least the first item mentioned in this post. I undersatnd they are gettign increasingly frustarted too be what appears to be a lack of opportunity for council to get invloved directly with a number of impoartant aspects of the projects. This is something they want because they believe (as I reported in a post on this blog last week) council will do one thing well that DPTI continue to show an inability to do and that is engage them in what the final product will finish like.