Woodford mother-of-three Donna McKendry knows she has a fight on her hands.
Mrs McKendry has lived in Woodford for 20 years but only recently decided to contact council and demand someone fix up Railway Parade and install footpaths for the 500 affected residents.
“My kids were small and I guess I didn’t have the energy before to raise it,” she said. “It should be a shared cycleway path, I don’t know why anyone hasn’t thought of it.”
Mrs McKendry and her netball buddy Tracy Gilbert have started a Facebook campaign called SAFER (Safe access for residents of Woodford along Railway Parade) and Mrs McKendry has recently been to a Blue Mountains City Council meeting to raise the matter. She said her teenage children “run the gauntlet” getting to the train station to get to school — previously the children were able to catch buses to primary school or she drove them.
“This is supposed to be a child-friendly city. How can it be child-friendly if your children can’t walk around their own neighbourhood on a secondary road (from the highway) without worrying about being hit by a car or a bus?”
Over the past nine years, council has constructed 9.3kms of off-road shared pedestrian/cycle paths in a 50/50 funding arrangement with the Roads and Maritime Services but the Railway Parade area at Woodford “is not listed in the 2020 Bike Plan”.
An initial council estimate indicates a pathway from the Rural Fire Service building to the station (1200m in distance) could “conservatively cost $400,000” — and that parts of the construction would be “challenging due to the topography of the site”.
But Mrs McKendry says she doesn’t need a grand concrete option.
“I’d be happy to walk on dirt, just slash and clear the area. I asked them at council to maintain the clearing.”
An interim cheaper option has been proposed by Councillor Chris Van der Kley involving an upgrade from the fire station to “the goat track” up a 1m grass and rock ledge near the RailCorp-owned pedestrian railway bridge between Memorial Park and Railway Parade.
“We have to clear a pathway and formalise something around the pedestrian bridge. This is about safety and it’s a first step,” Clr Van der Kley said.
“Some of the areas will require a suspended walkway but it’s got to be looked at and it’s got to be done,” he said.
But Mrs McKendry said the bridge fix wasn’t a suitable long-term option and didn’t cater for parents with prams. Just over a week old, Mrs McKendry’s Facebook campaign already has a few “likes” with one respondent declaring “you almost take your life in your hands walking to the station on the narrow road that locals including me, (use) to avoid the Hazelbrook -Woodford road works”.
Mrs McKendry said she was happy that council was looking into the issue — and that the area would now be included in future capital works planning and grants. “I’m determined that it will happen, but I realise it may take a long time. We have a basic right to safe mobility and we pay our rates like all the people in Leura and Blackheath and everyone else with their paths.”
Councillor Romola Hollywood pushed for a report and briefing session in the next three months to look at improving access to the bridge, clearing vegetation on a more regular basis and examining encroachment by some residents.
This was passed by council.
