I’m doing a big lap of Australia.
We spent some time in and around Sydney recently and we were shocked, and appalled at the state of the roads.
After a few days in, we started counting potholes that were big enough to HAVE to avoid, and at over 40 on one road, gave up counting.
I honestly have never seen worse roads in my life.
Km after km of bumpy, holey, accidents waiting to happen.
The worst roads in the country. Totally shameful in a country like Australia.
So the question is, how did it come to this?
I know the last state leader, Gladys, was done for corruption.
I’ve followed friendly Geordies and the mafia like corruption of Barilaro is blatantly obvious.
Is it “leaders” being corrupt, or something other issue.
I’m not from NSW, so am interested to know.
Brisbane for example, was woefully lacking in infrastructure, so they had to play catch up on their roads, and over 20 or so years have caught up. The roads were never a death trap like Sydney’s though.
Any thoughts?
Funding… Not enough.
Climate… Two long spells of wet weather.
Development… Massive trucks everywhere.
Culture… Apathetic.
Politics… Only big business matters.
They are all good points. Every other city has these issues, but no other city has roads as bad as Sydney. Why the difference?
Perhaps @No1@aussie.zone 's comment paints a better picture of the issue. Maybe other cities are repaving more often rather than patching.
More and more cars on the road. Increasing weights of those cars. More extreme weather (caused by consistent reliance on fossil fuels…such as to power cars). The solution: more and better public transport. More and better bike paths. More and better housing in places close to where people work, shop, and partake in leisure activities. And less reliance on fossil fuels, including moving what cars do remain (with emphasis on the need to reduce total number of cars significantly) to electric.
Whilst that is fine and it’s a good solution, no other city in the country has roads as bad as Sydney, and I guess I just wanted to know why, or how, it ended up like that.
I’d say part of the problem lies with the responsibility to fix the potholes.
If I’m not wrong, the fixing of potholes falls under the councils (at least those potholes not in Motorways and such). And I’ll bet that each council has different budgets and priorities.
Sprinkle a bit of border arguments if a pothole happens to be between councils, and you’ve made yourself a nice plate of Not My ProblemTM!
I also wonder how much the population and area of Sydney affect this. Higher volume of cars degrades the road faster. Maybe we should use a measure of “potholes per capita” to be able to do an accurate comparison.
I remember seeing something about Mosman council who had a crew that was permanently repaving roads vs other councils that were just constantly patching potholes with contractors.
Turned out the repaving was better and cheaper.
Patching potholes always seem to not work wherever I drive. They always return. And using contractors to do it seems idiotic. Why would I ever want to fix a pothole permanently and put myself out of a job?
As well as all the other comments, a vouple to add,
Toll roads - practices minimising cost by owners.
Higher proportion of heavy vehicles on the roads, not just trucks, but SUVs and the Wanker Trucks.
Time of year, not a 100% on this, but i think potholes are more likely to form when there’s wet weather
Roads are really really expensive. Cars are getting heavier and heavier, no one wants to pay for them, people complain when roads are getting fixed. And Sydney is spread out.
Heavy rain the last few years damaged the roads a lot suddenly, councils have limited budgets, lots of heavy trucks (potholes are almost all trucks, heavier cars are bad for many raisins but they don’t really add much wear compared to delivery/freight trucks etc).
Maybe other cities have better road traffic and less freight by road?
