You reported a dangerous path. What happens next?
When someone reports a fallen branch, damaged path or other hazard, they should be able to trust that the warning will reach the right people and be assessed according to the risk it poses.
The death of Canberra cyclist Paul Storey shows why that matters. Mr Storey died after striking a branch over a shared path at Black Mountain Peninsula on 24 January 2022. The branch had been reported through Fix My Street 14 days earlier, but the report was sent to the wrong government team and the required risk assessment did not take place. The ACT Government has apologised to his family for those failures.
Pedal Power extends its sympathy to Mr Storey’s family and friends. His death highlights the importance of ensuring serious hazards are identified and acted on quickly. The ACT Government has since made significant changes to its reporting, triage and risk assessment systems and has published clearer information about how tree hazards are assessed and prioritised.
What has changed?
The ACT Government says it has improved the way Fix My Street reports are received and directed, established a dedicated team to assess incoming requests, and made arrangements for urgent tree reports outside business hours. An ACT Legislative Assembly inquiry also found substantial improvements in the system. Across all types of Fix My Street requests, the average time to resolve a case fell from 99 days in 2023 to 16 days in 2025.
Those changes are welcome. The Government has also now published clearer guidance about how tree hazards are assessed and prioritised, including the response expected for immediate public safety risks. Further reporting on how these arrangements are performing in practice would help build community confidence in the system.
In its submission to the Fix My Street inquiry, Pedal Power called for clearer follow-up on individual reports and published measures of how the system performs. People should be able to see whether their report has been received, assessed, assigned for work and resolved. Public reporting should also show how often requests are completed within their target timeframes.
A shared path is a transport route
A branch across a busy cycle route is not simply a maintenance inconvenience. It may leave someone with little room or time to avoid it. The same is true of broken pavement, gravel, debris or vegetation that obscures a path.
Pedal Power wants reports affecting major cycling and shared-path routes assessed against the harm they could cause, with serious hazards treated urgently. We welcome the Government’s new public guidance explaining how tree hazards are assessed and prioritised. Publishing information about how these systems perform over time, including responses to serious safety reports, would provide an additional level of transparency and accountability.
The government’s published guidance on public tree hazards says reports presenting an immediate concern receive the highest priority for assessment. It sets a target of less than 48 hours for urgent red-rated tree risks, while the Government has clarified that hazards presenting an immediate risk to public safety are treated as emergency work and responded to as soon as practicable, typically within hours of identification. This reinforces the importance of recognising the danger in a report and getting it quickly to the team that can assess it.
Make every warning count
The Assembly inquiry found that people frequently wanted better information after lodging a request. It recommended allowing users to reopen closed cases through the website. The government partially agreed, saying people can instead reply to a closure email or contact Access Canberra to request a review.
For Pedal Power, the measure of success is straightforward: when someone warns of a dangerous path, does the warning lead to timely assessment and action? The Government’s clearer public guidance is a positive step. Ongoing reporting about how safety reports are handled would further strengthen community understanding and confidence in a system people rely on.
If you see a hazard on an ACT public path, report it through Fix My Street with a precise location, description and photo if you can do so safely. For an urgent public tree concern, call Access Canberra on 13 22 81.
