Waverley Woes and Worries

SCHOOL buses, school children and high volumes of traffic are regular features of Waverley Street, Scone and residents are frustrated that their concerns about the safety and condition of the road has been ignored by Council for the past nine years.

The gravel at the side of the road is continually eroding away, the layers of road are also eroding causing the uneven surfaces and a constant narrowing of the road.

See photos of the road below.

Ron Martin, a resident of the street went to a Council meeting on Tuesday to again raise the issue and was again assured Council would “look into it”.

“There are two issues, there is the safety issue of the children on bikes using the street and for us we have a dust and gravel and noise issue with all of the buses and traffic coming through, but if you look down the street, which isn’t part of the bus route and is quieter, the road is sealed from gutter to gutter,” Mr Martin said.

“We moved here 11 years ago and about 9 years ago we were told when they moved the water pipe from underneath the road to the footpath, then they will seal the road to the edge, because the said they didn’t want to seal the road and then have to dig it up,” he said.

“When they relocated the pipe we thought, ‘oh great now they’ll seal the road’, but that was years ago and we are still waiting,” he said.

“Yet they have done up all the other parts of Waverley Street, even though this is the busiest part of the street because of the junction for all of the school buses going to St Mary’s and St Joseph’s and they have left it in the worst condition,” Ron Martin said.

The town’s bike path which connects local schools never made it to St Mary’s, instead it stopped at the Council building and the residents say they also worry about elderly people on scooters using the road.

“I’ve seen an old lady on a motorised scooter in the middle of the road, with a truck slowly following behind her, because she can’t go in the gravel and dodge the vehicles on the side of the road and there is no footpath; I felt sorry for the poor love,” said Justine Hartmann.

Marj Saunders agreed and said she’d also seen people on scooters being slowly followed down the road by school buses.

Mayor Wayne Bedggood issued a statement saying that there was no bike path to St Mary’s because nobody had asked for it.

“The cycleway work mentioned in your question was not identified by the community as priorities…..Some of the locations mentioned in your question are included in the footpath CSP for future work, but are subject to available funding.”

When asked if Council proactively consulted with local schools as part of their planning process, there was no response.

Council has however secured funding for the extension of the existing bike path in Satur to the TAFE, which will be completed within a month.

Related story: Letter: Getting Priorities Right