Victoria’s roads crack-up amid population deluge

By Leith van Onselen

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to acknowledge that the unprecedented immigration-fueled population growth into Victoria:

Which is projected to continue ad infinitum:

Necessarily requires massive infrastructure spending to ensure that incumbent residents’ living standards are not eroded.

So why then has the Victorian Government slashed funding for road maintenance? From The Age:

The condition of Victoria’s roads have rapidly deteriorated as VicRoads’ government funding has fallen, a report has found.

Since 2010, there has been an increase in cracking and roughness on the state’s roads, increasing danger to motorists, causing wear and tear to vehicles and increasing costs to the community.

And according to VicRoads’ own modelling, the problem will grow significantly worse in the next decade if current spending levels for road maintenance continue.

By 2025, more than 80 per cent of the state’s roads will be in “poor” or “very poor” condition, the authority predicts, unless more money is invested in maintaining roads…

“The increasing proportion of the state road network in very poor condition presents a growing risk to public safety and increases road user costs,” Auditor-General Andrews Greaves wrote.

The RACV’s roads and traffic manager, Dave Jones, said the condition of the state’s roads was the worst it has ever been…

VicRoads’ funding has been falling since 2010-11, the report found, including a 60 per cent cut to maintenance funding.

Meanwhile, traffic on the state’s roads has increased 9.4 per cent in the past decade.

This has led to a growing backlog of work…

Data reveals the health of the road network is worse in Melbourne than in regional Victoria, in terms of the percentage of the network that is rated “very poor”.

The diminution of Australian living standards continues…

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