Cardinia Shire Council last night endorsed its 2022-23 road renewal program for works across 54 roads in 18 townships.
Council says it will invest $3.122 million towards resurfacing and rehabilitating local roads as part of its $17.392 million commitment to upgrade, improve and maintain the shire’s road network in 2022-2023.
Cardinia Shire Mayor, Tammy Radford said, “We have heard loud and clear from our community that improving our local roads is important to them. That’s why council is prioritising improving road conditions, safety, and connectivity on our existing our road network.”
Council currently manages 1,579 kilometre sealed and unsealed road network, which presents many challenges across each township and a recent report outlines how weather has been council’s greatest challenge, the Mayor said.
Sustained wet weather has caused defects to increase by 58% on sealed roads and 36% on unsealed roads during winter compared to the normal peak. More than 1,100 road defects were recorded over the three month period, resulting in significant maintenance demand.
“Unfortunately, the extreme and consistent wet weather we’ve seen over recent months has not only contributed to an increase in road issues within the shire, but it’s also impacted our crews’ ability to complete permanent repairs,” said Mayor Radford.
In response to the increased workload, council has:
- deployed additional sealed road maintenance trucks;
- added two maintenance trucks;
- reassigned staff to both sealed and unsealed road repairs;
- employed contractors to complete drainage work;
- employed an additional contractor grader;
- hired and retained additional plant to meet functional need ;
- worked additional hours/days to support the community, and
- prioritised fixing defects on sealed roads to keep the shire moving.
Despite the significant wet weather, crews maintained an average response of four business days for correction of sealed road defects and response times within the requirements outlined in the Road Management Plan, the Mayor said.
“We’re making improvements and have increased our maintenance works to respond to recent weather and road issues, but we know there’s still more work to be done and we’ll continue to work closely with the state to improve our community’s overall road network,” he said.
