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Street safety initiative for women and gender-diverse people launches

The ‘Safer Cities: Her Way’ program will launch this week, hoping to improve the perception of safety for women and gender-diverse people in local public spaces.

An initiative to improve the perception of safety in public spaces for women and gender-diverse people has launched in Bayside.

The first stage of the ‘Safer Cities: Her Way’ project will collect feedback from the community during “walkshops” around common pedestrian routes to Rockdale, Arncliffe, and Mascot train stations.

The pilot program is a partnership between Transport for NSW, Bayside Council and nine other local governments across NSW, with the hope of implementing measures such as better lighting to make streets feel safer once the community consultation stage is complete.

“The first part of it is deep engagement with the community around locations that we have identified, to really understand what the community thinks would make them feel safer in those spaces, rather than making assumptions of what we think might work,” said senior council staff member Peter Barber, at a City Planning & Environment Committee last week.

“The second stage is to then choose some of those initiatives and implement them, and then evaluate them at the end and see if they were successful,” Barber said at the meeting.

“The intention is this would deliver a suite of measures across NSW that have been trialled that other people (councils) can pick up and implement and know that they might have more success.”

The “walkshops” – council-led tours of up to 20 residents around the train stations – will give local women, girls, and gender-diverse people an opportunity to provide feedback about how safe they feel as they walk. This feedback will be presented in a report to council in July.

The route of the first “walkshop”, which is scheduled for May 16. Photo: Bayside Council

Residents can register their interest online to join a walk. Selected participants will receive a $25 WISH gift voucher.

While the first in-person walking tour will be held next week around Rockdale station, an online survey is already open to the public and frequent visitors of the train stations.

Bayside Council has received a one-million-dollar grant over two years from Transport for NSW to fund the project.

“I have to commend this initiative, I think it’s fantastic,” said Cr Heidi Lee Douglas at the meeting.

“As a person who uses public transport from Rockdale [Station] on a regular occasion, it’s coming home late at night that’s the scary time, as a woman, alone.”

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