Council chops and changes cycle route

The City’s determination to build a cycleway network continues to run into opposition from residents who live along the routes.

Now, residents of Riley Street in East Sydney are hopping mad after a route was installed through one side of a pocket park, built in 1983, which closes the street at Liverpool Lane.

The problem, they say, is that Council has now changed its mind and is rebuilding the route through the centre of the park, against their wishes.

This will prevent the recreational use of the park – people sit on sandstone walls around garden beds and eat lunch, and residents have used the space for street gatherings and for a children’s play area. Residents say making it a cycle route will stop all that.

And each iteration of the route involves a drastic reduction in the size of the park’s flower beds – sandstone-walled raised circles which support plants and shade trees.

One garden containing a Jacaranda tree was reduced to make way for the original route along the eastern edge. Now the change of plans means a second garden will be reduced.

Resident Evelyn Klopfer, who has lived in Riley Street for 40 years, is furious.

“Suddenly, with a young jacaranda tree half uprooted, the men disappeared. Weeks ago. Nothing. No word, no men,” she said, referring to work stopping on the original route. “Just a huge thing in the middle of the closure with net around it with a deadish flower bed half pulled up and nothing.”

“And now, quite by accident, because somebody saw people talking in the middle of our closure, we realise that you have changed the plans – were we ever told? No.”

Residents say they had been consulted about the original route along the edge of the park and approved it because it left the centre of the park useable.

But they say new concerns about safety were brought up after the first route was nearly finished, with widened entrance ramps constructed at either end. They say Council then changed the plans without consultation.

Ms Klopfer said that after the “accidental” street meeting residents were shown a choice of two new plans, both of which used the centre of the park and required the reduction of a second garden.

She said the Council officer told them: “If you don’t agree with either of these, we will just do what Council wants to do.”

“It’s like dealing with Nazis,” said resident George Schwartz. “You’re given a choice of whether to be hanged or shot – it’s no choice.”

The City of Sydney had not responded at press deadline.

by Michael Gormly