Would ‘safety booths’ make you feel better about coming to the city at night?

Manned safety booths, where people can wait for taxis at night, would spring up near Melbourne hotspots under a plan by Lord Mayor hopeful Anthony Koutoufides to make the city safer.

Carlton champion Anthony Koutoufides would move to create “manned safety booths” across city hotspots for residents, workers and visitors, if he is elected lord mayor in October.

Koutoufides on Sunday unveiled his plans for a “safer and cleaner Melbourne”, saying it was a “top priority” for his team as the race for the city’s top job enters its final weeks.

“While police resourcing is a state government matter, there’s many things the City of Melbourne itself can do to make the city safer and cleaner,” Koutoufides said in a statement.

“To really encourage people back to the CBD and inner city, especially in the evenings, we must do better to make it a safer and cleaner place to be.”

Melbourne Lord Mayor hopeful Anthony Koutoufides wants to make the city safe. Picture: Wayne Taylor

He said the City of Melbourne should create “designated places of refuge” for people in the city, such as manned safety booths, especially for anyone waiting to be picked up.

Koutoufides also wants to secure more areas “in and around public places” to prevent brazen graffiti vandals from trespassing, as well as dedicate more resources to cleaning up graffiti.

Under his plan, Koutoufides would also look to:

— Increase lighting, particularly in Melbourne’s laneways;

— Review and increase the city’s CCTV network as needed;

— Work with car park providers to subsidise more parking spaces to assist police coming to the city to patrol our streets; and

— Work with the state government and police to ensure policing in the CBD is “not distracted by managing public order and protests, at the expense of street patrols and public safety”.

The booths would be ‘designated places of refuge’ for people waiting to be picked up at night. Picture: Supplied

“We’d work together with police to provide new infrastructure and facilities, allowing for increased street patrols to improve public safety,” Koutoufides said.

Lord Mayor Nick Reece pledged earlier in the campaign to double the number of CCTV cameras by 2026 by installing 200 more across the city.

Mr Reece has also promised to spend $10m lighting up the city, which would see 20 of Melbourne’s iconic laneways fitted with decorative lighting.

Fellow lord mayoral candidate Arron Wood in August released his three-part plan to not only clean, but control, illegal graffiti across Melbourne’s CBD.

He said the City of Melbourne’s approach to graffiti must be three-fold to focus not only on the court system and the clean-up, but to stop it from occurring in the first place.

The latest announcement from Koutoufides comes two weeks after he pledged to personally run free weekly outdoor fitness classes for City of Melbourne residents.

He has also promised to shout city workers a Monday morning coffee for at least a month in a bid to “bring life back” to the city.

Originally published as Would ‘safety booths’ make you feel better about coming to the city at night?