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Letters to the editor

Letters to the editor

It's like a highway

City Rd feels like a highway through the centre of my neighbourhood.

After walking down Elizabeth St from work, across the bridge over the Yarra to Southgate and then reaching the crossing on City Rd (opposite the Mantra Hotel) to get home, I feel like I am taking my life in my hands as huge lorries and other traffic race past across multiple lanes.

It also creates a real disconnect between the Southgate and Southbank areas. I would like to see much safer pedestrian walking/crossing zones, greater safety for cyclists, more plantings, and ideally, less traffic!

I would also like to see a greater connection between Southgate, the Arts Centre complexes and the Southbank side of the road. There needs to be a much greater focus on pedestrians and the interconnection of spaces and facilities.

It feels like an industrial wasteland rather than a resident-friendly zone at this time. It also does little to promote the area to visitors and tourists and challenges easy access to all the area has to offer. The underpass (under the Arts complex on St Kilda Rd) is also an eye-sore – dark, unsafe and smelly.

Improved lighting would help significantly.

Phillip O’Neill

A tunnel is the answer

Regarding ideas for improvements to City Rd in your recent edition of ‘Southbank Local News’.

My wish for improvements to City Rd was influenced by a project by a student at RMIT Urban Design masters program and shown at the RMIT Hub late last year.

His design was for the road to be covered, virtually creating a tunnel for vehicle traffic and entrances to car parks of apartment blocks. Above this street covering the tunnel would be open parkland for walking, cycling and playground area for children living in the apartment buildings that line the street.

Thus residents would walk (or take their lift down) to this level and be in a pleasant environment and not on the noisy and dirty traffic-laden street it is now.

I walk City Rd to go to Australian National Academy of Music and the Blood Bank and find it a very unpleasant trip; to walk above the necessary traffic would be wonderful.

Olga Abrahams

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