13 July - Another Bexley council fiasco
I had
planned to feature a first birthday event for the unlit pedestrian refuge in
Abbey Road but it seems the council has beaten me to it by five weeks. This
morning was marred by the sound of a nearby pneumatic drill and when I found time
to take a look just before 2p.m. I found the road dug up and a plastic
conduit installed. Unfortunately the hole and been filled in with wet concrete
and the traffic allowed to run through it. No workmen were in attendance and
every passing vehicle sent a resounding thump through the ground.
Seeing me with a camera the nearest resident rushed out and told me he had
phoned the council four times about the thump shaking his foundations and been
given the run-around. Apparently no one knew of any work going on in Abbey Road.
The resident told me his lunch time glass of beer had jumped off his
table when a bus went by and it, the beer that is, went all over his carpet. I can
well believe it, even small cars were making quite a thud. While we were talking a
council man turned up and said he had come to investigate and he hoped the problem would be fixed
before the day was done. It would have made more sense if he had supervised the
earlier work and ensured it was properly done.
He was evasive when asked why it had taken best part of
a year to address this safety problem but claimed it hadn’t been forgotten.
If it wasn’t forgotten doesn’t that make the council’s failure
willful and therefore a worse bit of negligence?
By 5 p.m. nothing had happened but by six a Conway lorry and a single man showed up.
To attempt to repair the road with no protection would be foolhardy and I
watched from a distance as he made a phone call. Immediately afterwards he
backed his lorry alongside the refuge and blocked the road. No traffic warning signs
were put out and the rush hour traffic had to directly face that coming in the opposite
direction. I don’t blame the man, he had been sent out totally unequipped to
tackle the job and chose to take his life in his hands to try to stop the thumps rather
than go home as he might have been justified in doing, leaving nearby residents
with little chance of any sleep.
By 7p.m. a temporary resurfacing had been completed and Conway had gone. Totally
unprofessional it might look but it was surprisingly effective at suppressing
the thuds. Will it still be intact in the morning?
The unlit refuge was previously reported on 17 February and
28 January and last year on 18 December and
1 December.
