West Ryde Cycleway

Recently Council accepted my motion that action be commenced to obtain agreement with RailCorp to design and construct the "railtrail" cycleway between West Ryde and Meadowbank rail stations. This pathway was proposed by the State Governments Bike Plan 2010, but work never commenced owing to State budgetary restrictions. Now that the CRI development (commercial/residential high rise) has been approved for RailCorp land adjoining west Ryde station, the opportunity has arisen to resurrect the rail trail project.

The CRI development approval requires the developer to construct the section of the rail trail passing through the development site. This will be several hundred metres long. My motion requires agreement to be negotiated for the adjoining section to be built. This is an extremely important connection because it includes a lightweight single span bridge across Victoria Road located between the rail bridge and the Sydney Water pipelines. A car-free crossing of Victoria Road will be a major safety improvement.

I believe this is the most beneficial cycle link that can be provided in Ryde at the present time.

Turning a house into student accommodation

Today I received a letter from a constituent complaining about activities in the adjoining house. Apparently an investor has purchased the house and then installed internal partitions (without Council approval) to convert it into crammed lodgings for a large number of overseas students. The matters complained of include:

• The standard rubbish bin is totally inadequate. It is always overflowing and there is more rubbish piled up around the side of the house even after collection night.
• The gate to the pool is often left wide open in a street where there are young children.
• Shopping trolleys are continually left outside the front of the house.
• There is a noisy party thrown once a week.
• As there is no “living” space in the house anymore. The occupants congregate on the front veranda, laughing and talking loudly until all hours.
• There has also been an increase in traffic and cars obstructing driveways.

This complaint is not uncommon within a kilometre or two of the university. Overseas students would have little understanding of the limits to acceptable behaviour when living in a house on a quarter acre block in suburban Sydney. Following complaints from the resident Council has issued an order for the works (partitions) to be demolished in 30 days which the owner appears to be ignoring. The resident wants Council to be more forthright and make things happen.

Unfortunately the State Government has not given Councils the power to direct the owner or occupants to do anything. If the written "order" is not complied with then the long process of prosecution through the Court has to commence. Even if the Council is successful the judge is likely to be understanding of the plight of the students and give a fairly long period for compliance, at least until after exams.

I sympathise with the plight of the complainant and have urged Council staff to take all reasonable steps to bring this problem to an end.