Blind Mayors

There is a wonderful story told by the Mayor of Kuala Lumpur about maintenance of the city infrastructure. Apparently the eagle eyed former Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad would phone him regularly after his arrival in the office to point out some ailing piece of public infrastructure that he had noticed on his way to work. A pothole here - a broken signal there and so on.

And the Mayor would then despatch someone to fix the offending item - while hoping that he wouldn't receive another phone call tomorrow morning.

Imagine that happening in Australia?

There is an intersection near the commercial centre of North Sydney - that for more than 10 years has had quite a large pothole smack bang in the middle of it. It was there so long that I was beginning to think it was a design feature ;-) Probably more than 20,000 people moved around or over it each workday. But someone has obviously noticed because it was recently fixed. After ten years?

And there is a dangerously uneven road surface near the local oval entrance in Port Lincoln - on the main highway into town that has been that way for over 30 years! OK it's probably a bit of a challenge because it involves a manhole cover, a misaligned road, an entry ramp and a roundabout - but 30 years for christ sake?

There are hundreds - no thousands of similar situations - and that is just on the roads that I traverse and which my tired old eyes have observed. What about the rest of the nation, Virginia?

Now I don't expect Julia to drive around and report these things to the local Mayors - but surely we can find people to become Mayors and represent these cities that don't walk around with their eyes closed - for up to 30 years.