Shade issue set to heat up again

FROM MY CORNER ... with Ann Brunswick

Do you remember when the revamped King George Square opened late last year? The new square cost almost $30 million but soon after its completion there were complaints from users about its lack of shade.

Pedestrians avoided crossing the open space in front of our City Hall for fear of the high temperatures, and it seems few were using the new space to sit for a while. Your columnist can validate those complaints, having felt the jump in temperature when leaving the shelter of Adelaide Street shop awnings and entering the square with its light-coloured stone that reflects heat upwards while the sun beats down. So ever since it has been my practice during hotter months to avoid using what is meant to be our city’s prime civic space.
But with the onset of winter the square again became a part of my CBD perambulations. Unfortunately there appears to be no evidence of any attempts to provide extra shade and, with summer’s inevitable approach, no doubt complaints will again be heard loud and clear.
Because of my avoidance of the new square for the best part of the past half-year, another of its in-built problems had not been obvious to me previously. But in the past few weeks it has become clear to me that the northern corner of the Ann Street side of the square is a source of potential injuries to pedestrians. That particular part of the square is made up by a series of shallow terraces with their edges marked by a border of black stone to contrast with the overall grey effect used throughout the rest of the square.
Pedestrians must either step down or up between the different levels, or use a cut-out ramp in the middle of each terrace edge. The trouble is that the black-edged terraces make the drop difficult to see when walking away from Ann Street.
It was sheer luck that I did not fall when first using them, and anyone stopping to observe others would see many pedestrians running the same risk. My difficulties occurred in road daylight. It must be even more risky at night. Surely it is not too much to have the steps and the change in level marked more clearly, or to have railings installed to shepherd users to the central ramps.
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While on the subject of King George Square, this column has previously questioned the usefulness of the covered “verandah” against the northern wall of the square.

It is a big space and contains a few seats. But there is still no obvious use for it. It all looks rather empty and pointless. All in all, the coming first anniversary of our new King George Square seems hardly worth celebrating.
As taxpayers and ratepayers we have yet again seen one of our elected officials celebrate the opening of a new piece of traffic infrastructure that we will now be asked to pay for, on top of our taxes and rates already used to pay for it.
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Lord Mayor Campbell Newman this week declared the new bridge across the Brisbane River from the inner-city bypass at Hale Street to West End open for business. And business it is, given it’s a toll bridge and we all have to pay to use it, unless you are on foot or on a bike.

It seems gone are the days when the Brisbane City Council or the state government used our money to build things for us and then let us use them without dipping further into our pockets. Cr Newman has won some plaudits for naming the bridge after one of Brisbane’s best-known musical groups, the Go-Betweens.
Unfortunately the name put up for a public ballot was the “Go Between Bridge”. Well, either we recognise the band by its correct name or we don’t. That means a hyphen as the band itself used and an “s” at the end.
So at your columnist’s instigation the editor of this newspaper has agreed to refer to the new structure only as the Go-Betweens Bridge from now on. If we all do it, maybe Cr Newman might fork out the cost of a new plaque.