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Mr
Rob Skinner
Chief Executive
Officer
Kingston
City Council
Dear Mr Skinner,
Proposed
Bicycle
Road between Charman Road
and Mordialloc Pier
Port Phillip
Conservation Council Inc, a federation of 16 conservation organizations
around Port Phillip, has considered the above proposal and strongly
supports the views of its Member Organization, Mordialloc-Beaumaris
Conservation League Inc, which that organization has conveyed to Ms
Rosemary Simpson, Project Officer, Bay Trail, in its letter to her of 8th February 2005.
Need to Minimize
Fragmentation of Coastal Reserve: The route
for the bicycle road
should follow the enlightened example of the adjoining municipality,
Bayside City Council, so that the route is, to the greatest extent
practicable, on, or as near as possible to, the Beach
Road road reservation. Great
advantages of that siting include:
- adding little extra edge
effect on the coast reserve in weed and litter intrusion, wind effect,
maintenance etc,
- utilizing the lighting
and drainage facilities already present on Beach
Road,
- maximizing the security
of cyclists by the ready visibility of the cyclists to users of Beach
Road,
- minimizing loss
or
disturbance to vegetation on the coast reserve,
- minimizing conflict
with, and disturbance to, pedestrian that use, and have long used,
areas nearer the sea, and
- utilizing the open,
unobstructed seaward edge of Beach Road
as the landward edge of the bicycle road, thereby saving the need for a
standard width of landward buffer area on a bicycle road alignment
further from Beach Road.
PPCC Inc. encourages
Kingston City Council to accept that a once-only expenditure to shift
certain obstructions near the edge of Beach
Road if necessary, such as bus shelters,
power poles etc. is a much sounder strategy than saddling the future
managers of the foreshore reserve with recurrent costs for extra
lighting and for maintenance of both edges of the bicycle road,
rather than just the seaward edge primarily, as our
recommendation would entail.
Opposition to
Extra Lighting of the Foreshore Reserve: PPCC Inc. points out that a
significant natural aspect of the Foreshore Reserve is the distinctly
lower level and prevalence of artificial lighting, and maintains that
that is a valuable and desirable aspect of the area that should be
retained. The recommended option of using the edge of the Beach Road
reservation, as opposed to chewing up a significant portion of the very
narrow Foreshore Reserve, involves no significant change in lighting
level, nor in intrusive lighting infrastructure, which is, during
daylight hours, a visual blight conferring no benefit whatsoever during
that half of the entire year, which is the half of the time that by far
most people use the Foreshore Reserve.
Yours sincerely,
Geoffrey Goode
President
Port Phillip
Conservation Council Inc.
cc. Hon. John
Thwaites MLA, Hon. Phil Honeywood MLA, Noel Pullen MLC, Chris Strong
MLC, Janice Munt MLA, Murray Thompson MLA, Kingston Mayor &
Councillors, Rosemary Simpson, Mary Rimington OAM
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