Buyer beware: Do you know the difference between a path and a road?
A “pathway” is like a footpath, isn’t it? WRONG. It’s actually a busy public road. Brisbane unit block owner Shelley Threfall, 64, found this out the hard way. Now, she wants to warn others about her traffic-induced “waking nightmare”.
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When is a “pathway” not a pathway? When it’s marked on a map.
Then, it’s actually a public road.
Lutwyche resident Shelley Threfall, 64, found this out the hard way.
A car smashing through Ms Threfall fence is the latest chapter in a drawn-out neighbourhood dispute that has turned her Lutwyche side street into what she calls a “waking nightmare”.
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Ms Threfall, who owns an East St unit block, said she had been fighting for years to convince Brisbane City Council to close off a skinny laneway running down the side of her property.
She says the 2.6m-wide strip of bitumen is used by hundreds of cars every day as a rat-run between East St and the one-way High St, and by clients of the neighbouring gym which is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
There is only about 10cm between the road and her timber fence and about 4m to her bedroom window. She has photographic evidence of large trucks — including a huge garbage truck — and long traffic jams clogging the lane.
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“I recorded over 100 drivers … here on Saturday, and it is horrendous,” she said.
“This goes on night and day, every couple of minutes, and overnight while I am trying to sleep. I am woken after midnight intermittently, and from 4am it starts to become busy.
“There are big vehicles towing caravans and trailers and heavy, wide trucks …”
She describes the sound of a truck passing her window before dawn like “being woken up by an earthquake”.
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Last Sunday afternoon, Ms Threfall said she returned home to find part of her side fence smashed to pieces, with parts of a car strewn among the mess on her front lawn. A tree had been flattened and a metal star-picket fence post snapped in half. A car was parked nearby. The star-picket post was protruding from its radiator.
She said while she was shocked to see the aftermath, she was not surprised.
“Vehicles speed from Lutwyche Rd into East St and I hear them coming,” she said. “They then they take the corner blindly, too fast, mindlessly, without thought for what lies ahead on this pathway.”
She said when she bought the unit complex in 2006, the lane ended at the rear of her property and a line of bushes blocked it off from the property behind. She said land searches conducted during the purchase showed the line of bitumen as a “pathway”, which she was told was reserved to provide access to her rear carparking.
However, she said some time in the past six years, the bushes had been removed and a driveway extended from High St to the pathway, creating a through-road that allows cars to take a shortcut around traffic lights on busy Lutwyche Rd. It also provides access to Fitness First’s undercover carpark, the entrance of which is past the end of the pathway.
Ms Threfall recently affixed a “no entry — private easement” sign on her fence, and installed star-pickets to try and protect her fence from damage. The wooden fence has broken palings in several places, most of which have occurred between ground level and 1m up the palings.
“This has become a dangerous rat run and (the area) doesn’t have the infrastructure to support (it) as a busy road for heavy traffic and the pedestrians who walk here. It is unsafe.”
A Brisbane City Council spokesman said that last year council had been “contacted by one resident … about the use of the East St laneway, however, an on-site investigation found there were no compliance issues”.
“The East Street laneway is classified as road reserve and any motorist is able to use it to access adjoining properties,” he said.
“Police are responsible for enforcing motorist behaviour, and it is expected that motorists drive with due care and attention through the laneway.”
Police confirmed that they did attend an incident in the laneway on Sunday, January 6.
A Department of Natural Resources spokesman said records indicated the pathway had been a declared road since 1920. The Queensland Government’s qld-gov.au website states that under the Land Act 1994, a road is defined as an area of land that has been “declared to be a road for public use … including a pathway … from property boundary to property boundary”.
Fitness First was contacted by City North News and sent a list of questions relating to the issue.
“At this time, Fitness First will politely decline comment on this topic or provide response to the questions,” a spokeswoman said.
Ms Threfall said another issue of concern for her was a CCTV camera that was attached to the rear of the gym building, pointing down the laneway and therefore directed toward her property’s rear patio. She said her privacy was being invaded and wanted the camera to be taken down.
Fitness First was asked to respond to Ms Threfall’s concerns about the camera but declined to comment.
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