The Victorian government has unveiled a new major road maintenance blitz that will rebuild, repair and resurface roads across Victoria.
The plan is fuelled by the largest single-year investment in road maintenance in the state’s history, with Victorian roads and road safety minister Melissa Horne launching the $964 million road maintenance blitz at the South Geelong depot of Fulton Hogan.
Fulton Hogan is one contractor that will deliver the works between now and mid-2025.
The blitz will target the state’s busiest travel and trade routes, with works set to be delivered on the Hume Freeway, the Princes Highway, the Western Highway, the Goulburn Valley Highway and Echuca-Mooroopna Road.
Other roads set to be repaired include Terang-Mortlake Road, Mornington-Flinders Road, Horsham-Kalkee Road and Tylden-Woodend Road.
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“We’re investing nearly a billion dollars to rebuild and repair the roads that Victorians depend on every single day — from the highways connecting our major centres to the local roads that keep our communities moving,” Horne says.
“Crews will be out delivering $2.6 million of works every day for a year – with around 70 per cent of all funding going towards our regional roads.”
The Victorian government says these roads were prioritised based on expert assessments and community feedback, ensuring that upgrades are focused where they’re most needed. This package also includes flood recovery works, with priority given to repairing regional Victoria’s flood-damaged roads. The final list of flood recovery projects will be confirmed in the coming months
Over the next nine months, crews will complete thousands of projects on the state’s network, ranging from road rehabilitation and resurfacing to patching potholes and maintaining bridges, traffic lights, signage and road infrastructure.
To deliver major works such as road rebuilding and rehabilitation, the state governments says there must be extended periods of warmer and drier conditions, which is why most work is done between now and May each year – ensuring repairs last.
Repeated flooding and above-average rainfall caused unprecedented damage to Victoria’s roads which meant its maintenance program needed to focus on rebuilding damaged roads last year.
Now this work to rebuild the state’s most flood-damaged roads is complete, resurfacing and rehabilitation levels will significantly increase during the upcoming maintenance season.
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