Wagga City Council has reached an 11th hour agreement with Sydney transport bureaucrats in a spat over hundreds of unauthorised bus stops.
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Transport for NSW says it and council have agreed not to completely remove almost 300 B Pole bus stops that took up about nine kilometres of parking space in Wagga, which TfNSW erected without any community consultation.
Council general manager Peter Thompson said TfNSW would instead remove the sign portion of the B Poles that were installed in the city in areas which were not previously designated bus stops.
He had been threatening to immediately remove all the signs from today, because he said TfNSW's "lack of communication" on the issue had been "completely unacceptable".
However, he said TfNSW made contact with council after it became aware he had issued a statement to The Daily Advertiser on Thursday.
TfNSW says residents will be invited to provide feedback on the location of the bus stops in the coming months.
It comes after residents were fined for parking in the new bus zones which did not go through council's usual traffic committee approval processes before their installation, because TfNSW incorrectly told council they were "non-regulatory" signs.
The blue-and-white bus stops, which were rolled out as part of a statewide program, each had a total no-standing zone of 30 metres that was not clearly marked by signage yet applied 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Mr Thompson said TfNSW had not provided a full reply to a letter council wrote in early April that raised concerns about safety issues at the unauthorised bus stops.
"The community are rightly confused by regulatory signs which have been put in in place without the proper procedure," he said.
Wagga Disability Access Committee member David Paterson, who lives with vision impairment, said that confused drivers parking in the bus zones meant buses had to park in the middle of the street to let passengers on and off.
He said this created danger for passengers, especially elderly people and residents with disabilities.
But he believes the TfNSW mix-up has prompted council to think more about safety issues for public transport users.
"I personally support the bus stops without a question of a doubt. The way that I see it, council desperately needs to put in bus zones where the B Poles are," he said.
"TfNSW threw them in without consulting anyone but council needs to come to the table and work together on this. If they don't get a bit of a shock to do something, they're not really going to do it."