THE south-west’s unenviable claim to having the worst roads in Victoria will soon be widely known through a Facebook page set up by the RACV.
RACV roads and traffic manager Dave Jones said photos of damaged roads in the south-west were being posted on the RACV Pothole Patrol Facebook page launched last month.
A badly rutted eastbound section of the Princes Highway near Deakin University, sections of the Hopkins Highway and Caramut Road will all feature on the Facebook page. Mr Jones said the RACV Pothole Patrol was taking photos throughout the south-west of roads in poor condition and people were also welcome to upload photos to the Facebook page.
“The whole idea of the campaign is to show in a visual way the impact of poor roads on the community,” Mr Jones said.
The Facebook page is part of an RACV campaign to lobby the state government for more roads funding in this year’s state budget.
Mr Jones said VicRoads had told it and local government the south-west had the worst roads in the state.
“The roads are getting rougher,” Mr Jones said.
The length of road in the south-west that was in a “distressed” condition had increased fourfold in the past five years.
He said the current and previous governments had failed to spend enough money on roads and the problems had exacerbated each year.
“This winter the roads will get substantially worse.”
While the state government last year allocated a $45 million restore-and-repair package to address the poor condition of some roads, Mr Jones said the money was not enough.
He said VicRoads had said work to upgrade some of the south-west’s worst roads would increase during the next two months but it would be insufficient to fix all the problems.
Mr Jones said bad roads were not only less safe, they also increased petrol consumption and vehicle maintenance costs and damaged farm produce that was being transported.
The RACV Pothole Patrol Facebook page is at https://www.facebook.com/#!/RACVPotholePatrol
Mr Jones said the page had already received more than 1000 likes.
