13 April 2022

Fix My Street requests take on average 52 days to complete: Minister

| Lottie Twyford
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Pothole

Potholes are often reported via the ACT Government’s Fix My Street portal. Photo: Michelle Kroll.

It took 52.2 days on average for matters reported via the ACT Government’s Fix My Street portal last year to be resolved, Minister for Transport and City Services Chris Steel has confirmed.

In response to a question in the ACT Legislative Assembly, Mr Steel said officers may already have inspected the area and that in some cases, immediate repairs could have been undertaken if necessary.

“The time taken for an issue to be formally resolved via Fix My Street is dependent on several factors including the need to engage with the correspondent who lodged the request to seek further clarification of the concern, seasonal variation in request volumes, redirection of resources to respond to emergency events including COVID-19 and storm events and more,” Mr Steel said.

Mr Steel also told the Assembly work was underway to continue the significant clean-up in Belconnen after a storm tore through the area in early January. He said 2000 requests for help with debris clean-up had already been lodged through the Fix My Street portal.

Chris Steel

Minister for Transport and City Services Chris Steel encouraged people to continue reporting issues via Fix My Street – including storm damage. Photo: Michelle Kroll.

“They [reports via the Fix My Street portal] help to make the government aware of issues that need to be looked at. We appreciate the community letting us know where that work needs to happen and we encourage people to continue to report.”

In total, 46,831 requests were lodged to Transport Canberra and City Services (TCCS) last calendar year through Fix My Street – where residents can report issues like potholes, trip hazards, malfunctioning streetlights and other road-related issues.

Issues with illegal parking can also be reported through the portal, but these are dealt with by Access Canberra instead.

An exact breakdown of what the Fix My Street requests were for throughout the calendar year is not yet available.

READ ALSO ACT Education defends resourcing amid national teacher shortage, recent troubles

The 2020/21 financial year breakdown is already available. It showed the top issue Canberrans had a problem with was streetlights, primarily due to malfunctioning bulbs.

This was followed by illegal parking, then potholes, requests for mowing and maintenance and pruning trees and shrubs.

A total of 47,248 issues were reported to Fix My Street in the financial year, up from 34,707 in the previous year.

Mr Steel last year said an average of 40,000 maintenance requests were managed by TCCS every year.

Requests related to potholes had increased substantially in 2021 – an increase the government has repeatedly attributed to the effects of La Nina.

READ ALSO Government dings Liberals on free bus travel, return to pre-COVID timetable

The government’s pothole repairs almost tripled from 2719 in the drier 2019/20 financial year to 6375 in 2020/21, when there were 3297 pothole-related submissions to Fix My Street.

In the 2019/20 and 2020/21 financial years, the ACT Government received 61 claims from drivers for damage to their vehicles from potholes and it paid out $37,320.

Opposition spokesperson for Transport and City Services Nicole Lawder has called on the ACT Government to do more to repair potholes to prevent Canberrans from having to deal with damage to their vehicles.

In January, she said she’d heard from constituents who claimed their cars were almost disappearing into large holes while others have had to fork out for car and tyre repairs arising from close encounters.

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ChrisinTurner4:51 pm 21 Apr 22

I would suggest the Minister is being told what he wants to hear. Recently FixMyStreet requests were not even being assigned to anyone to action due to a “computer fault”.

I suppose expecting them to deal with footpaths and pedestrian crossings is just too much to ask. After all pedestrians are less important than cyclists, scooter riders and car drivers in this town. So much for a green healthy town when you discourage people from walking! Where are the Greens? Playing with the tram, ignoring the trees and the less trendy people’s needs.

This is bollocks from Steel. I’ve got 4 cases lodged with FMS – 2 closed with no contact or resolution, one open from June 2021 with no correspondence, and one from February this year which was also reported by several neighbours. Nothing done on any of them.

Steel is just another useless Labor drone. If only, if only, there was a viable opposition. C’mon Libs, make yourselves electable so we can get of the Barr circus and all his clowns.

Fix My Street is a joke. No-one ever gets back to you, and no follow up is recorded on the case file. Cases just get closed as if the problem has been rectified. Even if you just knew that something was going to be done and an approximate time frame this would be a massive improvement. The only way to get anything fixed is to write directly to the Minister and keep following up every two weeks until you get some action. I know it’s hard on his staff but that is what you are left with when their preferred portal is completely ignored.

52.2 days eh? Balon…… I submitted a request in in AUGUST 2021, repeated it in Sep 2021, and again Dec 2021, and again in March 2022. Despite ticking the box I wanted to be notified, I have not received a single notification, NOTHING. NOTHING has been done either. Issue was Idiots in 4WDs driving on bike paths, around blind corners, to get to their favourite fishing spot, and that the deliberate & unlawful removal of several bollards allowed them to do this. Useless Gov’t dept. TOTALLY USELESS.

I have found that if you report traffic light issues they are super helpfull and will reply usually by the next working day. Can’t complain about that.

I put in a request to have the driveway apron and the footpath out the front of my partners house ground down because they were lifting and my completely standard car was scraping on these raised parts.

A couple of weeks later someonce came and ground the apron down but didn’t touch the footpath. I’d put that down to a lazy contractor or the message to them getting “clipped”.

That could be sorted if Fix My Street had some sort of follow up mechanism such as “Are you happy with the fix? If not what more can we do?”

Why is Access Canberra still dishonestly replying, no mater what the issue, “You should expect to be contacted within 10 working days”? Why should we continue to expect it when it never happens?

Dianne Parker1:39 pm 16 Apr 22

Have been waiting over 12 months for 1//2 dead tree with orange spot that means it is to be cut .
Waiting for it to land on a car parked under it then it might be Done.
Have been in contact with fix my street 3 or more times.

The ACT Fix my street web page covers a range of things including street lights. I’ve reported an issue with the pedestrian crossing lights at Challis street twice now. At night the lights are solely focused on the crossing with the verges almost completely dark. I’ve seen cars have to brake heavily when a pedestrian appears out of the shadows ( what if that were a cyclist). I’ve had no response and have given up but someone is going to get cleaned up there.

Except the Minister’s street. That takes one day

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