A foray into Fremantle town hall in search of the (closed) Justice of the Peace office lead me past a crowded noticeboard. Somehow my eye was caught by piece of paper advertising a system for reporting cycling-related accident blackspots.
The Blackspot App allows iPhone users to report particularly poor examples of urban planning – with GPS coordinates, a description of the problem and even a photo should they have taken one.
Reports contribute to a webpage run by Australian Green Party Senator Scott Ludlam, both as information to warn others and as ammunition to safety campaigns amongst other things.
and an example of a reported problem:
I’d be interested to hear whether any changes have been made as a result of this system or others in the same vein elsewhere.
I prefer Snap Send Solve which actually sends your complaint to the relevant Roading authority (which it determines by your location) whereas I seem to recall that this one only sends it to certain politicians so is more a lobbying tool. I’ve reported two issues (downed tree over track and an unsafe pothole) using Snap-Send-Solve and both were fixed pretty quickly. I probably can’t lay claim to the tree, but the pothole had been there for months and was fixed three days after I reported a near crash on it.
You might want to read my post and in particular Mr Reece Waldock’s response and comments in respect to the BlackSpot app. I believe that MainRoads WA maybe be now accepting Neatstreet reports but I am not sure that the BlackSpot app is being accepted as a valid reporting source (to political maybe?).