Editorial: How much worse can our roads get?

What changed over the traditional summer road maintenance season?

Sections of the Princes Highway west of Colac, particularly through the Stony Rises where reduced speed limits have been in place for at least a year, remain a mess.

The overtaking lanes at Illowa would be best suited to a theme park on the Gold Coast such is the rollercoaster ride.

The Hamilton Highway is a mess. The Hopkins Highway too. A section near Bushfield is an accident waiting to happen. There are several sections near Purnim, Mortlake and beyond that have had reduced speed limits for long periods. More than 15 years ago The Standard asked an RACV expert to drive the Hamilton Highway and back then he reported the road had well and truly past its life expectancy.

No meaningful lasting improvements have seemingly been made since.

Now, this week South West Coast MP Roma Britnell raised with the roads minister a section of the Cobden-Warrnambool Road was dangerous and needed to be improved. Naringal CFA captain Charles Dillon told us there had been four accidents in the past week on a straight section about two kilometres long and something had to be done.

A fatal accident - the first on the south-west's roads in 2024 - happened there on April 18 but police investigations are not focussed on the road.

For years now we have campaigned for road upgrades. As we reported in August 2023, the state government overhauled its roadworks contracts, bringing them into line metropolitan standards. Why it took so long beggars belief. Regional Roads Victoria earlier last year revealed it was considering redesigning the region's roads to better cope with wet weather. Recently we reported money allocated in the federal budget had been cut as a war of words erupted between the government and the opposition's Dan Tehan, our local federal member.

But we still we wait.

And that wait is likely to get even longer with the state government's financial position.

At this time of the year as the state government puts the finishing touches on its annual budget, due to be handed down on May 7, 2024, we look expectantly towards Spring Street for some relief.

We will yet again ask, plead for road upgrades but it's hard to see us getting a decent chunk of money, especially when our cries are not getting through. As we have previously reported, a Victorian premier has not visited Warrnambool in an official capacity since July 2017. That's more than 2460 days.

We have not seen a sitting Prime Minister in Warrnambool since 2019 either.

We drive these roads every day and we have grown so despondent we just accept them. That has to change and so too the apathy from governments towards our region.