Valerie Smith, Gardens
The car park behind the Sea Point civic centre has always been a car park but now, according to the sign, it is no longer a car park.
It is a skateboard area in which you may park at your own risk.
Apart from the idiocy of mixing vehicles with skateboarders, the consequences of which were demonstrated when a skateboarder caused extensive damage to a stationary car, the sign board makes it clear that skateboarders, unlike car drivers, do not skate “at their own risk” so in the event that they smash themselves up, presumably the municipality will take full responsibility and cover whatever costs – using ratepayers’ money, those same rate payers whose concerns were of no consequence to ward councillor Jacques Weber.
Councillor Weber claims that the ward does not have skateboard facilities, but that isn’t true because they have the whole length of the promenade.
Further he states that skateboarders are not allowed to use roads.
In that case there is a need to educate skateboarders.
I have seen them careering down Kloof Street, Gardens, and recently I was almost knocked down by a skateboarder who came the wrong way down the Mill Street ramp leading up to De Waal Drive and a little later the same fool came the wrong way down the ramp leading up to the Gardens Centre.
The skating park is right there but he apparently felt it was less fun than playing with the traffic endangering himself and others.