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As reported by North Shore Living in January, residents of North Sydney were recently devastated disappearance of five heritage bus shelters.
It was revealed that the unexpected demolition was due to a North Sydney Council error, with the works on the replacement program immediately suspended and an internal investigation launched to solve how the oversight occurred.
The results of the inquiry have since been released, with the investigation finding ‘that Council had not complied with its own heritage and approval requirements when five heritage bus shelters were removed in error’.
Now, the Council will have to spend around $300,000 to replace the historic bus shelters that were heritage listed since 2015.
The replacement ‘like-for-like’ replica bus shelters are estimated at $50,000 to $60,000 each.
The bus stops were removed to be replaced with new shelters compliant with the Disability Discrimination Act requirements (DDA).
There are currently 66 bus shelters located on bus routes in the North Sydney LGA. Fifty-one of those are styled in an interpretation of the original tramway shelter, located at North Sydney Oval, and were constructed between the late 1980s to the early 2000s. Of these shelters, 44 were heritage listed in 2015.
According to a Council spokesperson:
“At its meeting on 13 February, Council resolved to undertakes a full Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) compliance audit on all of Council’s heritage-listed bus shelters, which will be reported back to Council.
“Until the outcome of the audit is completed, no further heritage-listed bus shelters will be removed or modified. Shelters identified as having structural issues will be stabilised with temporary structural engineering infrastructure and made safe.”
The heritage listing of the shelters was implemented not only to preserve the physical history, but also the social and cultural changes of the community over the years. Most were built in the 1980s to deliberately pay homage to the Federation character of many of the suburbs in North Sydney.