As the road authority for around 1,300 kilometres of roads in the Central Goldfields Shire, throughout the term of a new Council we are required to update our Road Management Plan.
At the March Council Meeting last night, Councillors approved the Draft Road Management Plan 2024 for community feedback.
The Road Management Plan sets the parameters by which Council will operate the road network over the next term of Council.
The review of the Road Management Plan is important because it determines the way in which Council manages, inspects, repairs and maintains its roads.
The aim is to ensure our road network is safe, well presented and maintained to standards that are affordable.
Central Goldfields Shire Council Mayor Cr Liesbeth Long said the purpose of the Road Management Plan is to ensure we have a safe, well presented and maintained road network.
“We know roads are important to our residents – as a Councillor it’s by far the most common topic for constituents to want to talk to me about and rightly so, because it’s how we get around most of the time.
“Our roads do take a beating; from the significant rain events we have experienced over the past few years, as well as harvest time with heavy trucks moving grain from farm to silo.
“What many people in our community may not realise is that we manage around 1,300 kilometres of roads in our Shire. Of these, 39% are sealed, 48% are gravel and 13% are tracks. Plus, to support these roads we also have 79 bridges and 175 major culverts throughout the Shire.
“For a small rural council, it’s a huge amount of infrastructure to maintain and the reality is roads aren’t cheap to upgrade or maintain.
“That’s where the Road Management Plan comes in. The review of our Road Management Plan has identified some opportunities where Council could improve its management approach, including alteration of inspection and defect response timeframes.
“This is a step towards us being able to ensure the management of our road network can be achieved within the level of resource available in our organisation.
“It’s also important for us to educate our community on what happens when they report a road issue to us.
“In addition, please note that any defects that are flood related are being handled separately – to learn more about the flood recovery works including where works are up to and why the process is different, visit www.centralgoldfields.vic.gov.au/floodworksupdate .”
Residents are invited to review the Draft Road Management Plan, learn more about the road issue process, and provide feedback by visiting www.engage.cgoldshire.vic.gov.au/roadmanagementplan2024
Feedback is required by 5pm, Friday 10 May 2024.
What happens when a road issue is reported:
Council looks after a significant quantum of road assets and has a limited number of resources at its disposal. Taking these factors into account the following approach is used when responding to reported issues from the community to ensure an equitable and safe network is provided across the shire.
If you report a road issue, our Assets team will inspect it between 2 and 10 days (depending on the type of road)
From this inspection the issue will either:
- Be rectified immediately if the defect needs intervention (as per Road Management Plan)
- Be blocked off to ensure public safety if it cannot be repaired immediately.
- Be added to programmed defect inspections program which happen “regularly (every 6 to 12 months depending on the type of road)” if the issue doesn’t require. intervention immediately. Works are then scheduled if those issues or defects reach a threshold following the next routine inspection.
- If no issue or defect is found during the inspection, no works will occur and the area will be monitored through the routine defect inspections program that occurs every 6 to 12 months depending on the type of road.
