A power pole has been installed in the middle of a bike path in Adelaide's northern suburbs, sparking safety concerns from cyclists and bemusement from others.
SA Power Networks, which put the stobie pole in, says it will fix the path to go around the obstacle this week but only after publicity over the weekend criticising its placement.
A cyclist who regularly uses the path along the Little Para River at Bolivar says the pole has been there for three months.
Cyclists have to divert either onto gravel or down a riverbank to go around it.
"It's on a sweeping corner with zero lighting," cyclist Tom Colls said.
"With longer dark hours in the winter, it can pose a risk to early morning and later cycling commuters that don't have expensive high-lumens forward lighting.
"On top of that, the loose gravel used to traverse around it can be mushy and slippery under wet conditions."
Mr Colls told Salisbury Deputy Mayor Chad Buchanan about the issue on Friday.
Mr Buchanan had a look at it over the weekend and posted about it on Facebook on Sunday alongside the message "You had one job".
"It was certainly something that I wouldn't have thought we'd see pop up in the middle of a shared path, but I have been told that SAPN (SA Power Networks) … will be realigning the shared path, which has been somewhat reassuring, but in the meantime it is dangerous and there needs to be some adequate signage and particularly some lighting around it at night-time because it is dangerous for cyclists and that is something I've asked our staff to follow up over the weekend."
According to a development application approved by former planning minister Vickie Chapman a year ago, the power lines are being built to connect to a new gas and diesel power station at the nearby Bolivar Wastewater Treatment Plant.
A condition of the approval was that all infrastructure damaged during the development be reinstated at SA Power Networks' cost.
The work included removing seven regulated trees.
'No other place for pole'
SA Power Networks corporate affairs manager Paul Roberts said the pole had to be in the middle of the path because one side was a wetland and moving it the other direction would have necessitated trimming a tree, which the company did not want to do.
A second pole is next to the path — rather than in the middle of it — but has a fence around it that also blocks the bikeway.
Mr Roberts was unsure when the pole had been installed but said its location was chosen in consultation with the City of Salisbury council.
"The intention was originally to reinstate the path when we removed the second old pole in early July," he said.
"What we'll do instead is we will now this week get a subcontractor to reinstate the path to the right of where the pole is located and we'll then have to do some further reinstatement after we remove the other pole, which I think will happen some time in early July.
"So, look, there's really sensible reasons why it's there and we have an intention and a plan with the council to put the bikeway back but just to the right of the existing bikeway."
He said stobie poles had to be installed using large trucks, so it may not have been suitable to move the bike path first.
"We'll use this instance, as we always do, as a really excellent opportunity to do a post-project review just to see what we could have done better and, if there are things we could do better, we'll integrate that into our future thinking for these types of works," he said.
