Local councillors are fed up with the amount of graffiti along Casey’s rail corridors.By Sarah Schwager
CASEY Council will continue its bid to lose graffiti along the rail corridor.
At last week’s council meeting, councillors agreed to write to VicTrack, which owns all land and infrastructure in Victoria used for the purposes of public train and tram based transport, to ask that they accept financial responsibility to clean graffiti off their land.
The issue of vandalism, rubbish and overgrowth along the rail corridor has caused much discussion at council.
At the moment, council only removes graffiti visible from roadways and pedestrian paths but councillors say graffiti is just as visible from the trains.
Council’s graffiti removal contractors, Urban Maintenance Systems, were commissioned to undertake an audit to identify the cost involved in removing graffiti from properties along the rail corridor and ongoing maintenance.
The audit found that there was 10,662 square metres of graffiti throughout the rail corridor, of which only six per cent was located on State Government assets.
Removal of this six per cent would cost about $19,050 in addition to maintenance.
Council will ask that the Government clean and maintain that area in the interests of improving the visual amenity of rail travellers.
Mayor Kevin Bradford said another important issue was the long grass and rubbish around the rail corridor, which restricted access for emergency vehicles.
The report found the grass would need to be mowed so that graffiti removal work could be undertaken.
