Copy for Pennant Hills Civic Trust Newsletter
January, 1999

Now you can do something about it, by registering your complaint with an Epping Neighbourhood Watch group.

Two years ago Area Coordinator Beatrice Player asked Hornsby Shire Council for a "Navigator’s Paradise" pilot project trialling navigational aids. All homes in the Dence Park area now have the house number on the kerb, and at most intersections, both streets are named. Sixteen new signs feature council logo, suburb name and a new "wedge"scheme for showing property numbers.

Instead of showing the range of numbers within a block, the scheme shows the first numbers on both sides of the street and a wedge, or incline, symbol to indicate the direction the numbers run in. It avoids ambiguities in current notation and conveys at a glance information previously needing up to eight numbers. The scheme is being trialled at the request of the emergency services.

"The RTA has improved its signage greatly over the last few years," says Mrs Player. "But local councils are responsible for most street name signs, and up to a quarter of those signs are missing. I am asking councils to put up their missing signs and when they do, to include on them information the motoring public wants. I am also asking councils to fund universal kerb numbering. My vision is all of Sydney turned, bit by bit, into a Navigator’s Paradise."

Mrs Player praised Hornsby Shire Council for funding the pilot project and for its vision in trialling wedge notation. She has informed all 40 metropolitan councils of the trial and in early 1999 will be giving them the feedback she has received.

"Five of the new signs in Navigator’s Paradise are in Essex Street south of Epping Road. Please visit and phone me with your comments. Even if you can’t visit, I want to hear what you would like to see, or not see, on kerbs and street name signs. Your views will reach 40 councils, the Local Government Association, and the Standards Association."