#FixVicRoads: Victoria’s pothole hotspots revealed, thousands of drivers lodge complaints
The locations of thousands of dangerous potholes and road craters being reported by drivers across Victoria’s road network can finally be revealed in an exclusive map obtained by the Herald Sun.
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The safety of Victorian motorists is being put at risk, with an alarming 15,000 pothole reports last year — averaging more than 120 per day — as the state’s roads continue to crumble and new road craters emerge.
Exclusive figures obtained by the Herald Sun reveal the shocking state of our roads with the Mornington Peninsula, Gippsland and southeast Melbourne among the worst areas in Victoria for pothole concerns.
Today the Herald Sun launches a special investigation, Fix Victorian Roads, revealing street by street where the 15,000 potholes are being reported, why they are occurring and the appalling time it is taking to get them fixed.
The revelation comes as RACV Head of Policy, James Williams, has warned that maintenance of roads has been falling short “for the last three years”.
He added that the state was putting a bandaid on a much bigger problem choosing to simply plug holes rather than conduct proper maintenance, which will cause major concerns in the years ahead.
“If they want to keep patching potholes, by all means keep patching that is fine in the short-term, but in the longer term they need to get back on top of their road maintenance or you’ve just got more work and more cost coming.”
Snap Send Solve – an app in which people can log reports about issues like potholes and rubbish dumping with councils – has identified the extent of the problem in Victoria with more than 45,000 road safety issues reported in 2024 — an average of 860 every week — 14,900 relating directly to dangerous potholes.
The biggest hotspot for road craters is the Mornington Peninsula, which topped the list with 1,720 reports lodged.
This was followed by Latrobe – Gippsland, which had 1,563 reports, and the southeastern suburbs of Melbourne, which had just over 1,200.
Snap Send Solve app founder Danny Gorog warned the data clearly showed the issue was widespread, but that new problem areas were also emerging.
“If you look at Warrnambool and South West year-on-year, that’s grown about 31 per cent,” he said.
“Shepparton is up 23 per cent, Melbourne West is up 20 per cent, Melbourne inner is up 38 per cent.”
In Bendigo, reports soared 41 per cent between 2023 and 2024, Mornington Peninsula saw jumps of 29 per cent, and Shepparton 5.4 per cent.
“Most of the potholes are on main roads, and these are maintained by the Department of Transport,” Mr Gorog explained.
“If we look at reports relating to state government roads, they are going to be up around 17 per cent year-on-year.”
The responsibility for road maintenance is shared between local councils, who fix smaller residential roads, and the state, which is typically responsible for bigger thoroughfares.
However, some councils believe the state is failing to hold up its end of the bargain.
In June 2024, West Wimmera Shire Council issued a guide clarifying which roads the Victorian Government was responsible for.
“The deteriorating condition of some VicRoads arterial roads is due to ongoing inadequate funding of these crucial assets, which falls under the purview of the state government. Council is not responsible for these conditions,” the document warned.
In May, the Allan Government announced a $976 million repair blitz, with Minister for Roads, Melissa Horne claiming: “We delivered record roads funding last year and this Budget will deliver even more — making our roads more resilient.”
However, Shadow Minister for Roads and Road Safety, Danny O’Brien, said despite the big funding figure the “road maintenance program is a cut in real terms on last year and condemns Victorians to suffer from continuing poor roads.”
Mr Williams said in reality the funding was not enough and warned more road maintenance needs to be done.
“There’s been underfunding for the last three years,” he told the Herald Sun.
“But it’s very difficult because the budgets aren’t opaque and the buckets keep on changing in the way they are characterised.”
He pointed to the latest Government announcement saying “it’s nearly $1 billion, which is a very large amount of money. But a lot of it is for mowing grass, fixing signs and patching potholes.
“What we want to know is how much of it is actually going into road rehabilitation. That’s what’s needed to keep the asphalt up to standard to stop cracking and water going into the cracks.”
He said the state needed to rehabilitate five per cent of the state’s road network every year to stay on top of maintenance — a target not being met.
According to the transport department’s annual report for 2023-24, more than 225,000 potholes were plugged – almost 620 a day – however, just 200 km of road was rebuilt or resurfaced.
This was even after extra flood recovery funding was issued for the road asset maintenance program following damaging events in 2022 and 2023.
Freight routes are also in bad need of repair, and truck drivers have warned that Victoria’s roads pale in comparison to neighbouring states.
“There’s a section up in the western districts where it’s like going surfing in a truck,” shares Chief Executive of the Victorian Transport Association, Peter Anderson.
“It just lifts up and down, drops down, and lifts up and drops down. And then when you get to the border with South Australia, the road gets solid. Why did we do this differently on one side and the other?”
Victoria’s poor road conditions are not just annoying; they’ve become a significant safety concern for many.
There are reports of potholes sending motorcyclists off the roads and into oncoming traffic.
Sources said there have also been a number of car accidents in recent years where road defects likely played a part.
The RACV My Country Road survey released in 2024 revealed 64 per cent of Victorian motorists listed potholes and poor road conditions as their biggest road safety concern, overtaking dangerous driver behaviour.
Join the Herald Sun’s Fix Victorian Roads movement by using the hashtag #FixVicRoads on social media.
Originally published as #FixVicRoads: Victoria’s pothole hotspots revealed, thousands of drivers lodge complaints
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