Council to continue Kings Cross blockade

COMMENT…

Macleay Street in Potts Point will remain closed one-way every Friday and Saturday night for a further three-month trial, with the City of Sydney hiring the same private firm already used to block Hickson Road in The Rocks.

The decision follows a five-week trial by Kings Cross police, aimed at stopping “car hoons” disturbing residents of Macleay St late on Friday and Saturday nights. Police have requested Council to move the closure times forward an hour to 11pm–3am, and say they will continue to monitor traffic flow in other streets around Kings Cross.

A Lord Mayoral Minute praises the trial: “The managed closure has achieved its aim, with many residents telling me that they had their first good night’s sleep on a weekend for many years.”

This feedback in large part was an organised letter and email campaign from the group, centred in the high-end Icon apartment block, which had campaigned for the closures. The “first good night’s sleep” line was well used.

On the face of it, this is a great example of Council listening to residents and responding. But dig a little deeper and several points in Council’s report begin looking flaky.

A core problem with this type of action is the displacement effect. Turned-back cars can also enter Kings Cross via Ward Avenue and Elizabeth Bay, a mainly residential area (unlike Macleay St which is largely a retail strip at ground level).  So closing Macleay St may simply displace incoming traffic to other areas, just as some was displaced to Kings Cross after the closure of Hickson Road.

Council will address this by building two ‘speed cushions’ in Ward Avenue “to stop a potential alternative access when Cowper Wharf Roadway is closed.”

Do speed cushions really “stop” traffic? If so, surely that would solve the problem in Macleay St, and the closures would not be necessary. But if speed humps only slow traffic – which crawls bumper-to-bumper anyway during busy times – will they actually do anything?

What of other major entries to Kings Cross? William Street, Darlinghurst and Woolloomooloo are all home to far more residents than the Macleay St enclave. But apparently they are to get no relief and will likely wear the extra noise and traffic displaced from Macleay Street.

A democratically inclined council might see such closures as an expensive favour to a privileged minority. The Icon building, on the site of the legendary Chevron Hotel, is home to many of the campaigners who, before the closures began, had taken to throwing eggs off their balconies at offending cars. The building won local fame when one of its residents hired a helicopter to move in a grand piano. Its residents live behind double-glazed windows high above the street noise, already enjoying a quieter environment than most, with fabulous views.

They are proudly elitist, too. Parrying some indignant emails from campaigners after my original reports, I put it to them that their street closure was simply at the expense of other locals.

“Go on”, and “You don’t say” came the replies, along with the helpful suggestion that other locals should also campaign to have their streets closed, and so-on wherever the traffic detours to.

So the NIMBY solution is effectively to blockade Kings Cross (and maybe the whole city) from suburban visitors who come here for entertainment –  most of whom are not ‘car hoons’, either. This postulates a global city with a bankrupt entertainment precinct, a dull, economically depressing prospect that horrifies those who sensibly moved into those areas because they want to live where the action is.

The very definition of a city is “a destination for work and entertainment”. Just because some also choose to live in the city does not alter that. By all means, find ways to manage problems, but to simply gate off the city misses the point.

Visitors pay for  public roads via their taxes, yet would be denied access to some of them in favour of a  minority of locals whom the Council report inaccurately describes as “the community”.

The report also ignores several questionable claims in their letters. It’s “reasonable” to expect a good night’s sleep, campaigners claim. Well yes, but less so if you move into Kings Cross, next to an airport, a motorway or a railway. And tough luck for the wider inner city community who don’t have a private police force closing their roads.

And was their sleep really so much better, or was the phrase a well-scripted sound-bite? The campaigners showered Lord Mayor Clover Moore with this message at the last Community Forum, two weeks into the trial – but there had not in fact been any closure the Saturday before, as observed and photographed by The City News. And the closure is only one-way, so the full bikie pack observed roaring down Macleay Street apparently didn’t disturb anyone’s sleep. Residents have a perfect right to campaign but Council, who are masters of spin themselves, should be able to detect hyberbole in an organised campaign.

Council’s three-month extension was not based on any objective assessment of the previous police trial, as the decision was made well before that trial was finished. This looks like a pre-determined decision, one of many in Clover Moore’s war on entertainment in Sydney.

And nor was there any organised community consultation – if there had been, Council might have learned that the proposal had previously been rejected out-of-hand by 2011 Residents’ Association.

These anomalies did not deter our uncritical Councillors, who voted unanimously for a continued ‘trial’ using $60,000 of ratepayers’ money to benefit a small, localised elite, with no credible evidence that noise will not simply be displaced into other residential streets.

But that’s the way this council works – if you support the existing agenda you are defined as “the community” and your views are welcomed and acted on. But if your cause opposes the existing agenda you are ignored. Examples of this are numerous.

And the existing agenda is an all-out War on Kings Cross, euphemistically referred to within Council as “normalising” the only district of Sydney that is defined historically and culturally as anything but normal.

by Michael Gormly