North Bondi Community Claim Traffic Calming Victory

By Jessica Issa on January 10, 2014 in News

Back in October, The Beast featured a story about Bondi hairdresser Frankie Nasso’s plea to Waverley Council to help slow vehicles down outside his Campbell Parade shop. Mr Nasso put together a petition on behalf of the people of North Bondi and gathered over 500 signatures. In response, Waverley Council has made some seriously speedy changes.

“They’ve doubled the size of the islands to stand on whilst crossing, and now there’s only one lane of traffic coming through instead of two,” Mr Nasso said.

“It’s for the safety of children. People are driving way too fast and the only way to slow them down is to change the whole design of the crossing.”

After calling Waverley Council for two years about the issue, Mr Nasso was understandably pleased he’d organised the petition as the signatures definitely sped up the process and pushed Council in the right direction.

“After not having touched the zebra crossing in 30 years, Council has finally responded really well. They promised to have it done by the end of December, and they’ve kept their promise.” Mr Nasso said.

“They’ve brought in professionals who have been working on it for just three days and it’s nearly finished. It took just three days to fix a 30-year problem.”

Mr Nasso said that it was a victory for people power and urged anyone wanting changes in their community to stand up and do something about it.

“Go out and get your petition, get your signatures and someone will listen. This has certainly been a very community-based exercise and it worked really well.”