Page 635 - Week 02 - Thursday, 16 February 2017
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understanding of the need for better road maintenance and general urban services than the ACT government itself apparently does. Ideologically charged debates on issues that will never be decided in this chamber should not—indeed cannot—replace the central role of this government in providing world-class infrastructure and attendant urban services.
Unfortunately, for years, the pattern in the ACT has been for the territory and municipal services directorate to set targets for the resurfacing of both the territorial road network and the municipal road network, only to fail year after year to meet these targets. This has created a serious backlog of adequate road maintenance as more and more roads have fallen behind schedule for essential repair and renewal, increasing the risk of irreversible deterioration, posing a safety threat to all road users and almost certainly increasing the cost of future repairs to these roads.
The one bright spot in this rather depressing story is that, according to the TAMS annual report for 2015-16, the directorate finally reached its annual road maintenance targets last year, a feat that, according to the same report, was made possible not because the territory’s finances have been managed in order to provide adequate road maintenance funding but rather because roads to recovery moneys provided by the commonwealth government allowed TAMS to resurface nearly double the number of square metres that they did in the previous two years. In other words, without assistance from the federal Liberal government last financial year, the backlog of roads in the territory awaiting needed maintenance would have grown even larger.
As it is, the road maintenance targets for last year were just barely reached. The goal for the territorial road network was five per cent; 5.1 per cent was achieved. The goal for the municipal road network was four per cent, with exactly that figure being reached. This means that, in the words of the annual report, “the backlog of resurfacing works throughout the territory” was “maintained”. We can all be grateful, of course, that this backlog did not once again grow even larger and more unwieldy, but it must be pointed out that unless the ACT government at some point actually starts to reduce this backlog of roads awaiting their scheduled maintenance, it is only a matter of time before these roads begin to fail and can only be restored to use through very costly repairs.
Many of Canberra’s road users may not fully understand the projected lifespan of certain road surfaces and the resulting schedule of resurfacing that our road networks therefore require, but they can certainly see the poor quality of the roads that has resulted from the ACT government’s chronic neglect regarding this matter. Numerous roads in the territory are pitted with potholes and often the repairs to these potholes do not last. I have personally spoken with constituents who have told me of potholes that have returned mere weeks after being filled.
This is unacceptable, but it highlights a more important issue. As indicated by Burningham and Stankevich’s research, the appearance of potholes is one sign that road maintenance has not been performed on schedule. Roads that look acceptable and usable on the surface are often hiding significant problems below. By the time these problems become apparent on the surface, considerable deterioration of the road bed has frequently occurred.
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