Victorian road authorities filling almost 700 potholes a day

Amid a record drop in critical road upgrades being completed, a huge number of potholes are being filled every day as part of a stopgap solution.

Victorian repair crews are being forced to fill almost 700 potholes a day across the state’s crumbling road network, shocking new data has revealed.

Amid a record drop in critical road upgrades being completed, an estimated 220,000 potholes were filled last year as part of a stopgap solution.

It brought the total number of potholes filled over the past five years to an estimated 1.25 million, or more than one every 100m across the state.

The Department of Transport and Planning is reporting a surge in the number of claims for damage to vehicles because of the poor state of the roads.

Victorian road authorities are filling almost 700 potholes a day. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

Shadow Minister for Roads and Road Safety Danny O’Brien said that the state of Victoria’s road network was unacceptable.

“More than 220,000 potholes last year equates to one pothole for every 100m of state road, or nearly nine per kilometre,” he said.

“Filling these potholes is not something to be celebrated – any road engineer will tell you that potholes are a symptom of failure to maintain the roads, not success.”

The Allan government has persistently blamed major flooding from October 2022 for the road problems.

The Allan government has blamed major flooding for the road problems. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

But Mr O’Brien said it was ludicrous to blame an almost two-year-old event for a failure to keep up with maintaining the roads.

“This is the result of years of budget cuts and neglect, not floods,” he said.

“Labor’s failure to maintain our roads is costing Victorians through damage to their vehicles, reduced productivity and more dangerous road conditions. Labor has presided over $41bn of mega-project cost blowouts but has left our state roads looking more like goat tracks.”

As the road network deteriorates, hundreds of regional and metropolitan roads have been added to the state’s ballooning “roads in poor condition register”.

An estimated 220,000 potholes were filled last year.

It means that they are subject to restrictions such as reduced speed limits because of their poor state.

The Herald Sun revealed this week that the state government had also quietly buried its flagship Regional Roads Victoria agency, as it prepares to sell of its road maintenance business to the highest bidder.

RRV, which was established as a dedicated country roads body by former Premier Daniel Andrews in the lead up to the 2018 state election, was wiped from the internet in August this year and its call centre number 1399 RRV (778) has gone dead.

As at March, 480 regional roads were subjected to speed limit reductions or driver warnings due to their poor state.

Another 61 metropolitan sites were also under restricted use, totalling almost 840km of the total road network.

Funding to resurface the road network dropped to just $37.6m this year, down from $201.4m last year and well below an $82m average between 2018 and 2022.

Road experts have repeatedly warned that the underspend was now leading to the state’s roads deteriorating at an alarming rate.

Cutbacks on the percentage of roads being resurfaced – expected to be up by two-thirds over the next 12 months – would lead to an exponential spend in future years.

A government spokeswoman said an average of 220,000 potholes had been filled each financial year since 2019.

In 2022-2023, 370,000 potholes were repaired across the network because of widespread flooding and extreme rainfall experienced in October 2022.

“We’ve invested a record $964m into maintaining our roads in this year alone, far exceeding the yearly average of $493m under the previous Liberal National government,” the spokeswoman said.

“We’re delivering the works needed to repair the root cause of those potholes – with recent maintenance works focused on completely rebuilding flood-damaged roads from the ground up.”