Road collapse: contractors’ resurfacing contracts slashed

The Allan Government has cut regional road resurfacing work by more than 90 per cent, accelerating the networks’ collapse.

The failure of the Allan Government to resurface roads leaves them exposed to water seeping through cracks and undermining their foundations.

Victorian road contractors’ resurfacing work has almost ground to a halt across the regions, exposing a $249m hole in the Allan Government’s budget.

“Across the industry we’ve lost 90-95 per cent of annual resurfacing,” one contractor said.

Another contractor said every road needed to be resurfaced at least every 12 years, which equated to about 8 per cent of the regional road network being treated annually.

“(But) we’ve only been doing about half that over the last five to six years – about 4-5 per cent,” he said, due to the lack of funding.

Resurfacing is critical to waterproofing regional roads, whereby contractors used a spray-seal treatment of bitumen and aggregate to cover the surface, preventing water penetrating cracks and undermining road foundations.

Opposition roads spokesman Danny O’Brien said Labor’s neglect had created “a ticking time bomb on our roads”, that would accelerate the collapse of the network.

Contractors said the lack of funding had even forced the Victorian Government’s own road surfacing company, SprayLine, to find work interstate.

An examination of the South Australian Government’s tenders and contracts website confirmed SprayLine was awarded a $1.78m contract to start “spray seal works on Southern Ports Highway”, near Robe, on February 27 this year.

Victorian Minister for Roads and Road Safety, Melissa Horne. Picture: Ian Currie

Last June The Weekly Times exposed Victorian Roads Minister Melissa Horne’s failure to set a target for resurfacing roads in regional Victoria for 2023-24, after the May state budget simply stated “tbc” – to be confirmed.

Ms Horne again refused to set a target, when asked this week, simply stating: “This (financial) year we’ve invested more than $770 million to road maintenance across the state – that’s equivalent to $2 million each day.”

Yet the 2023-24 budget allocated just $441m to road asset management, which along with $30m in output and $50m asset funding delivered a total of $521 million, a shortfall of $249m on the minister’s $770m claim.

Contractors, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of losing work, said the $770m was “a mythical creature and we don’t know where it is”.

A key measure of the cutback is reports from contractors that their bitumen use has fallen by 21 million litres, which is enough to spray-seal treat more than 11 million square metres of road, equal to the total amount used in resurfacing regional roads in 2021-22.

Department of Transport and Planning reports show the situation is made worse by the failure of the Allan Government to clean out culverts and roadside drainage pits, which has led to the build-up of water next to roads, further undermining their foundations.

In 2020-21 the department reported clearing 7000 drains and culverts, dropping to 4000 in 2021-22.

But in 2022-23 the department changed its reporting measure, reporting it had cleared 79.9kms of roadside drains, making it impossible to compare to previous years.