Wollondilly Council’s shire-wide roadworks initiative is progressing well, with 52,000m² of heavy patching completed over six months, made possible by $9.5 million in funding from the New South Wales Government’s Regional and Local Roads Repair Program.
The heavy patching completed equates to 17km of a single lane of road, almost 34km of drainage has also been completed and 38km of unsealed roads have been graded.
This is in addition to Council’s $22 million investment in roads maintenance and reconstruction program in the 2022-23 financial year.
The funding was announced in January 2023 to help address the significant flood damage across Wollondilly’s 890km road network that has occured in recent years.
Wollondilly Shire Mayor, Matt Gould, said that Council hit the ground running when the funding was announced as it had already conducted an assessment of the road network and priority areas for heavy patching, unsealed road grading and drainage works after the series of extreme weather events in 2022.
“Funding had been diverted from the Capital Works Program to start making headway to fix up the most critical sections of roads, prior to the funding announcement,” Mayor Gould said.
“This put Wollondilly in a great position to be able to get this funding working for us and ramp up the heavy patching program, with some major improvements now achieved on roads including Silverdale Road, Thirlmere Way and Menangle Road, as well as Bronzewing Street, Scroggies Road and Macquariedale Road.”
Mayor Gould said staff have worked extremely hard to maximise the works Council has delivered with the money available.
“Unfortunately, the $9.5 million won’t fix everything that needs fixing and there is still a lot more work to do, but the efforts of the Infrastructure Operations team and their efforts to get the job done have put us in a much better position and we are continuing to work to address the impacts of historical underspending on our roads through a record investment in our Capital Works Program.”
Council has already spent approximately 75 per cent of the funds which have improved driving conditions on numerous roads within the Shire.
Featured image: A rural road in Wollondilly. Image credit: Wollondilly Shire Council.