Australian Cycling Forums - Bicycles Network Australia

Hi all,

About 4 weeks ago, I reported a stretch of local road to my council, as it is hideously bad, both for 2 and 4 wheeled vehicles.
A week later, I received a reply back telling me that it is a RMS (NSW) controlled road, but that my email was forwarded on to them, which is good.

I then received a reply from RMS, saying my email was being forwarded to the appropriate dept, which is also good.

I waited a few more days, and sent one back to the RMS, asking when I could expect to receive a reply, and was told that the email would be re-sent. Not so good.
At this stage, I enabled read receipts.

A couple of days later, I received this.

From: {Removed for privacy} [mailto:{Removed for privacy} .nsw.gov.au]
Sent: Friday, 9 November 2012 17:08
To: lump_a_charcoal
Subject: Not read: RE: Road repairs/upgrade?



Your message

To:
Subject: Road repairs/upgrade?
Sent: Friday, November 09, 2012 1:08:36 AM (UTC-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)

was deleted without being read on Friday, November 09, 2012 1:08:30 AM (UTC-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada).

Am I expecting too much here?

Any advice on the next steps to take?

Talk to your local Member/councillor. Explain what has happened and why you need them to take up your cause. You could also take it up directly with the Minister for Roads or ask your local Member to do it on your behalf.

All else fails - A Current Affair, Today Tonight or any other media which likes to have a crack at governmental ineptitude.

Good luck

That's truly bizarre. In all my dealings with State Governments, I've never seen that sort of message. Plenty of times I've had to chase them, or just never got a reply, but never that.

Agree with the suggestion of going political. If you write to your local Member, they will forward that to the appropriate Department and a reply MUST be made within a reasonable time. Ministerial correspondence is given very high priority in Government.

are you sure the electronic advice is accurate? my experience is that the recipient typically has the option of sending a read receipt (when they open the email, in which case the response, if sent, will always be that it has been opened) or not. in the latter case, i'd have thought that no message would be sent to the sender. it's hard to understand how the message you received was processed - isn't the script to send it embedded in the actual email? if it was deleted, would that script ever be run?

Snap Send Solve on your mobile device

Snap Send Solve determines your council using your smartphone's GPS location.

Once your GPS location has been determined the server sends back all relevant council details, including contact information, location, and email contact.

Snap Send Solve allows you to easily capture and report on common issues including Litter, Hard waster, Parking, Street Cleaning, Trees, Noise, and also provide a general request or general feedback.

All reports from Snap Send Solve are sent from the app using your email address so that the council can communicate directly with you to fix the issue. We are working to develop deeper integration with council backend systems.

il padrone wrote:Snap Send Solve on your mobile device

Snap Send Solve determines your council using your smartphone's GPS location.

Once your GPS location has been determined the server sends back all relevant council details, including contact information, location, and email contact.

Snap Send Solve allows you to easily capture and report on common issues including Litter, Hard waster, Parking, Street Cleaning, Trees, Noise, and also provide a general request or general feedback.

All reports from Snap Send Solve are sent from the app using your email address so that the council can communicate directly with you to fix the issue. We are working to develop deeper integration with council backend systems.

Looks good, but I was whining about a whole stretch of road!

Does it take panoramas?

EDIT - While I was in the Google Store, I found neat streets too, so I can easily report my slack garbos!

Get the Blackspot app. This is a Greens service, and they do follow up reports.

RonK wrote:Get the Blackspot app. This is a Greens service, and they do follow up reports.

Can only find it for iPhone...

il padrone wrote:Snap Send Solve on your mobile device

Snap Send Solve determines your council using your smartphone's GPS location.

Once your GPS location has been determined the server sends back all relevant council details, including contact information, location, and email contact.

Snap Send Solve allows you to easily capture and report on common issues including Litter, Hard waster, Parking, Street Cleaning, Trees, Noise, and also provide a general request or general feedback.

All reports from Snap Send Solve are sent from the app using your email address so that the council can communicate directly with you to fix the issue. We are working to develop deeper integration with council backend systems.

+1 great App.

Have used it to report this section of road to Moorabool Shire (actually pretty bad for a few km but this was worst bit). Riding along here was bad enough dodging the potholes (?) but then cars were trying to do the same thing at 100kmh. Patched the next week (but starting to fall apart again!).



Have used it successfully to report a few sites, although last time City of Ballarat simply put up a "Rough surface" sign

I like to think our council is just trying to give us the full pave/Roubaix experience

I've used neat streets with only 50% success rate. In one case with M5 cyclist markings, they incorrectly identified the responsible party as a council in spite of having quite accurate GPS coordinates in the message, and the council had to redirect it to the RTA (RMS). It took over six months for the issue to be corrected.

I've had more immediate success when I've sent emails directly to Councils including photos and GPS coordinates. In your case, the RMS contact form is at http://www.rta.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/index ... dback.form" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;, or you can use the contact email address to give a longer description of your complaint.

In many cases, the RMS (RTA) sub-contract the road maintenance to the local council. The council has to submit your complaint to the RTA to get approval for any repairs, and can only act after they receive that.

Nthing both Snap Send Solve and Bike Blackspot (only on iPhone at present, but an Android app is promised).

Snap Send Solve contacts the appropriate local council, so good for smaller maintenance issues, etc.

Bike Blackspot contacts the State and Federal Transport Ministers, so more appropriate for bigger jobs, or small issues which are likely representative of bigger policy problems.

Even though I suggested going political on this, it may be worth you picking up the phone and speaking to the department involved first.

I work for an IT company (although I am not a geek, just a user) and the wording of the read receipt had me thinking so I did a quick Google search. It seems that there are some known/reported instances where the read receipt with this wording is automatically generated, for example, when a recipient has rules set up to automatically redirect incoming emails into certain folders.

So....it may be that your emails were redirected into a specific folder, they may have been read, or they may actually have been deleted without being read.

I don't agree Tracey.

I think that several emails should be enough over several weeks. If it takes more than that, then I think handing it over to big brother (local member) is appropriate.

BTW, I handed it over to big brother last friday.

Byke wrote:Nthing both Snap Send Solve and Bike Blackspot (only on iPhone at present, but an Android app is promised).

Snap Send Solve contacts the appropriate local council, so good for smaller maintenance issues, etc.

Bike Blackspot contacts the State and Federal Transport Ministers, so more appropriate for bigger jobs, or small issues which are likely representative of bigger policy problems.

For those in WA and wishing to report matters related to the Department of Transport (i.e, Main Roads, Public Transport Authority) you might want to note the Director General of the Department of Transport's take on Neatstreets, the Green's Black Spot website etc ... Enjoy the read here.

I do believe that following on from this post that there has been some discussion between Neatstreets and Main Roads which may see a change in attitude and more integration. Fingers crossed.

Andrew

I use neatstreets as well. They provide feedback on your report so you can actually check on the progress of your report

Just an update -

I have recontacted the RMS about 6 times now, with the promise of a reply every time, and I have still received nothing.

I also contacted my local member, with equal success.

I think I will start making phone calls now, as emails just don't work.