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Entire sidewalk parking spaces have been painted over on the narrow inner suburban streets, leaving no room for locals to walk.
Sydney’s Inner West Council has painted curb parking spaces that clog more than 80 per cent of the pavement on Balmain’s notoriously narrow side streets.
Complaints have come in from aggrieved residents who now have to take to the streets to pass parked cars that do not leave enough room to pass.
A council spokesman said the new pavement spaces were necessary to make way for emergency vehicles traveling through the area.
Physical Disability Council of New South Wales chief executive Edward Morris criticized the move as an unacceptable solution that has created accessibility issues for disabled people.
Sydney’s Inner West Council has painted parking spaces on the pavements of Balmain to create more space on the road for emergency vehicles to pass.
NSW Physical Disability Council chief executive Edward Morris criticized the solution because it forces pedestrians entering the road to walk around parked cars, putting them at risk.
Morris could not accept that the council had apparently prioritized parking space over accessibility and safety.
“Councils have a responsibility to ensure there are no barriers to access and should take into account that the minimum width required for two people in wheelchairs to pass each other on the pavement is 1,800mm,” Mr Morris said.
Locals who took to social media tended to agree with him, similarly complaining about the obvious problem in the Band-Aid solution to limited road space.
“Two parking spaces take up the entire road, sending pedestrians to the center of the street, where my partner was almost hit by a large SUV that didn’t budge at all,” one person wrote on X.
“So let’s not think about people with strollers and strollers,” asked another.
“Why have a trail at this point?” added a third.
“Oh how ironic to completely block the road and paint ‘yield to pedestrians’ on the street,” said another.
A council spokesperson. he told 9News which had been slowly implementing sidewalk parking spaces for more than 20 years.
“These were implemented because some streets are highly restricted and there were issues such as insufficient footpath width, informal parking on footpaths, pedestrians walking on the street and insufficient road width for emergency vehicle access,” they said.
“This resulted in the council looking to treat the streets with marked parking spaces and 10km/h restrictions to make the carriageway safe to use for all roads.”
Daily Mail Australia has contacted the Inner West Council for comment.
Locals also criticized the measure, which does not allow strollers or wheelchairs, and one person posted that his partner was almost hit by an SUV when he had to walk to the street.
WalkSydney’s Lena Huda insisted busy streets required separated paths to ensure pedestrian safety.
Ms Huda said creating more space for pedestrians rather than cars means “greater freedom and accessibility for people of all abilities to get around”.
“Not just those who know how to drive a car and need to find a place to park it,” he said.
Motorists have long complained about the inability of Sydney’s roads to accommodate the increasing number of cars traveling through the city.
A new interchange in Rozelle has been branded “confusing” and labeled Australia’s most complicated underground interchange after it opened in late November.
Rebecca Clements, an urban planner studying at the University of Sydney, said the new Interchange shows councils have always struggled to accommodate cars.
Highways Minister John Graham also said on Monday that drivers’ frustrations were “real” and that certain elements of the new design should never have been approved.
An additional 400 meters of double lanes at the junction were supposed to reduce congestion, but merging them from three lanes to one created a new danger for drivers.