SYDNEY’S STREET

Hokitika Guardian, 28 December 1928, Page 2

SYDNEY’S STREET

CONTINUALLY BEING TORN UP. SYDNEY, December 18. The old game of tearing up Sydney’s streets and footpaths is again in full swing, without the slightest regard, appn'rently, for the fact that the city is crowded, and. indeed, overcrowded at the busiest shopping period of the year. A footpath is no sooner restored to something liae its old order than another working gang, with picks and shovels in their hands and a glint of malevolent pleasure in their eyes, descend upon it like a wolf pack, tear it up. place barricades round it, and forte pedestrians, almost at the risk of their lives, on to roads already surging with, traffic. Where footpaths are not being trenched, roads arc being torn up by the tramway authorities. What with all this, with builders who. in the ruthless march of progress, are also doing their hit of obstruct wlmt Americans call the sidewalks, and with the city railway construction, Sydney today seems to he sadly lacking the school girl complexion.

Sydney, apparently; will never have the free and unfettered use of its footpaths and roads as the Grand Moguls of half a dozen Government Departments and other bodies can come along at any time, seemingly without any regard for co-ordination, and make a me-.s of the city. There is in Sydney a mysterious body known as the Street Opening Conference. It >• supnosed effectively to control and. regulate these matters, and so co nvlin ate all these operations as to cause «■ mimimmn of disturbance. But, w incut statutory powers, it seems to have about as much kick in it as a dead mule.