3 months ago
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Frustrated locals have resorted to carrying lanterns and strip lights to illuminate an inner-city rail bridge more than a year after raising the alarm about the dangerous crossing, which the state government has declared unsafe.
Pedestrians have reported stumbling and falling at night while crossing the Erskineville Road bridge, an unlit passageway spanning 50 metres over the heavy rail tracks on the T3 line, and part of the arterial road leading to King Street.
Zio Ledeux holds the lantern he uses to illuminate the Erksineville Road bridge.Credit: Flavio Brancaleone
Responsibility for the bridge lies with the state government, which accepted control months after Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore urged then-transport minister Jo Haylen in December to “urgently install lighting on the bridge before an injury occurs”.
Moore requested lights be installed on the bridge to optimise walker visibility – a proposal that Transport has pushed back on amid concerns that the lights could visually impair train operators on the line below. Instead, it is investigating the addition of a single light pole at the end of the bridge, a measure that locals believe would illuminate only one side of the footpath.
Zio Ledeux, who has lived in Erskineville for more than 30 years, first raised concerns about the bridge more than two years ago after he felt unsafe crossing one night after a doctor’s appointment. He said he felt “extremely let down” by the state government, which he said had failed to protect pedestrians.
“It’s an appalling safety concern for the public – it’s outrageous they’ve been allowed to do this for such a long time,” Ledeux said. “It feels really unsafe, like you’re walking into a black hole.”
Sydney Deputy Lord Mayor Jess Miller says the battle to install lights had been the “longest game of bureaucratic ping pong” she’d ever played, and that she found it “absurd” that a solution still hadn’t been agreed.
Deputy Lord Mayor Jess Miller has vowed to install lights herself if Transport doesn’t. Credit: Wolter Peeters
“If there was a willingness to solve the problem, it would’ve been, but it goes back and forward,” said Miller, who crosses the bridge weekly.
“If it doesn’t get solved in a little while, I’ll personally go to Bunnings and install some fairy lights myself.”
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Transport, in ministerial correspondence with Erskineville residents on September 1, acknowledged that the bridge was “inadequately lit” and it committed to an outcome that addresses the community’s safety concerns.
City of Sydney council officers investigated the addition of lights at the ends of the footpath last year, but they scrapped the plan after concluding it would have a negligible impact on overall safety.
Miller echoed Moore’s call for lights to be installed along the length of the bridge, saying the greatest issue was in the middle of the footpath, where it is really dark.
A Transport spokesman said the department was “aware of the concerns raised by the community”, and that it was “continuing to investigate solutions to improve lighting across the bridge, including the option of installing a light pole at the northern end of the rail bridge”.
The spokesman didn’t address whether lights would be installed on the bridge itself and nor did he indicate a timeline for when plans would be announced.
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