Cap on cars
ON Saturday afternoon we witnessed once again and for the first time since our return from an overseas trip, the crazy situation on the Cappuccino Strip.
Here were hundreds of people enjoying themselves in and on the pavements, restaurants, coffee shops, etc, but all were faced with the South Terrace traffic issue; speeding hoons, big buses, no crosswalks, noisy motor cyclists, etc.
Why? Because it appears a small business lobby group have enough pressure to persuade Fremantle councillors to seemingly suspend indefinitely a decision to make the  ‘strip’ a pedestrian thoroughfare on weekends.
Their reason? Bad for business!
We have a friend who is a long-term stall holder in the Fremantle Markets. We asked her about the temporary closure of South Terrace last summer. ‘Great, it brought more customers’.
Undoubtedly the ‘Cappuccino Strip’ is a major visitor/tourist attraction of Fremantle. Yet Fremantle council makes no attempt to promote this attraction or improve the thoroughfare.
If they did so I am sure more visitors would come and they would spend. This is more than the drivers along the ‘strip’ do now; in fact no stopping is allowed.
What’s wrong councillors? Don’t you want more people in the city centre? And why do you continue to ignore the worldwide trend of establishing pedestrian thoroughfares.
It does not make sense.
Sandra and Rhys Gray
Harvest Road, North Fremantle

Hey, sailors…
YOUR article “Boaties ramp up call” (Herald, October 29, 2016) is about the need for boat ramps and parking for the general public but includes an image and line, which by default, suggest that there was a plan for South Beach, but this proposal was by and only for the exclusive Fremantle Sailing Club.
Perhaps they could open up and allow access to the general public given they have the launching facilities and parking space, which is rarely used.
Jim Meckelburg
Davies St, Beaconsfield
The Ed says: A publicly accessible boat ramp on South Beach was definitely a plan being pursued by the transport department a decade ago. Under the Recreational Boating Facilities Study of 2008, South Beach was marked as “unlikely” because of public opposition, but the department was under instruction to find a site urgently, and we can’t help but feel its heavy hand in the sailing club’s latest proposal. Fuelling that suspicion was a comment by the club’s commodore when the plan was unsuccessful that they weren’t too concerned because “our members weren’t really going to be using it anyway”. Was some deal done over the club’s dreams of a 500-pen expansion in return for pushing the department’s agenda?

Amen to that
GRAHAM MAHONY’S letter (“Ad majorem dei gloriam,” letters, October 22, 2016) requires a brief response.
Contrary to his insinuations a new church is unnecessary, the existing structure is decrepit, and probably should have been demolished years ago.
The primary school also on-site has grown and therefore the whole site requires rearrangement.
Dr Mahony also opines about lack of transparency in Catholic Church accounting and finance. I agree completely with him about this.
Events may well have taken a very different course if only all parishioners had been aware from the outset that for some 50 years, Dr Mahony’s beloved tennis club occupied parish land (prime Attadale real estate) upon which it paid no rent.
Dr Pauline Farley
Studley Rd, Attadale