Maintain our paths, you bastards

Ah, the joy of pottering around your local bike/pedestrian path on a sunny winters day. Lovely stuff. Until you see how much care and love and attention our local council pays to the pedestrian infrastructure. Not a lot by the looks of things.

Here's a photo of a local path. The bike symbol actually looks a lot clearer in the photo than it does in real life. You can walk right over this thing without even realising it is there.

Line marking spray paint in a can costs about $10 in Bunnings. I know. I checked. Council probably buys it by the pallet and gets it for less.

Hang on, this is local govt we are talking about here. Ha ha. They probably buy it from Jim, who is a mate of so-and-so, and they get it at $20 a can. No wonder they have no funds to send a bloke around with a stencil and a can of yellow stuff. I'd respray it myself, but I don't have a stencil. If you see a photo posted here in future of a really shaking, dodgy looking bike symbol sprayed on the footpath, then you'll know that I have given up and had a go myself. My efforts would probably make a drunken Jackson Pollock effort look neat and tidy.

I spotted an article in the paper last week about a case of "jogger rage" in Melbourne. A jogger ended up in Court because he pushed a pedestrian off a footpath, and the pedestrian went down an embankment and got a bit banged up. The jogger ended up having to pay $10,000 in compo and was lucky not to get banged up. Reading between the lines, the pedestrian was probably ambling along in the middle of the path and just refused to get out of the way. It's been years since I have jogged, but I remember the importance of rythym when you are running. Breaking your stride is just the worst thing that can happen once you get going. I sympathise with the guy. If people had the common sense and good grace to keep to the left, this sort of thing wouldn't happen.