We’ve held a number of community information sessions over the past couple of years, in conjunction with major road works, to help people understand the road building process. We’ve also presented some background information on council‘s road infrastructure that I thought may be of general interest.
Like many rural shires, Palerang’s most expensive ‘piece’ of infrastructure is its transport network, its roads and bridges, and like most rural shires, with a large geographical area and relatively small population, it is the most challenging to maintain. The Palerang LGA covers 5,134 km2, and includes around 1440 km of roads, around 600 km sealed and 800 km unsealed. There are also 121 bridges, 25 of which are still of timber construction and nearing the end of their operational life.
From a funding perspective, however, not all roads are created equal. Throughout the State, there is a road management hierarchy of State, Regional and Local Roads.
Funding for the maintenance of State roads is provided by the State, although works are often contracted to local councils. The Kings Highway (Main Road 51, or MR51), Sutton Road (MR52), and Braidwood Road (MR79) are all State roads, maintained under contract by Palerang Council—they don’t cost us anything.
The Palerang LGA also contains around 231 km of Regional Roads, being Tarago Road (MR268), Captains Flat Road (MR270), Nerriga Road (MR92), Macs Reef/Bungendore Road (Regional Road 7607 or RR7607) and Cooma Road (RR7625). The significance of Regional Road status in the present context is that the State provides some funding that can only be used for the maintenance of Regional Roads. In fact, around 75% of the 2013/2014 road maintenance grant budget of $2.2M was only for use on Regional Roads. The State also determines what roads will be classified as Regional Roads, so we can’t just make all our roads Regional Roads to take advantage of this funding opportunity.
The remaining 1,000 km or so of roads in the shire are local roads, which must be maintained primarily with revenue derived from rates, supplemented by a small amount of State grant funding. Balancing the road maintenance needs of the different parts of the shire is a major challenge for Council come budget time each year.
To put this funding into a bit more perspective, it costs around $3.50/m2 to reseal a road—that’s about $30,000/km. Rehabilitation, which is the complete (re)construction of a road, typically costs around $1,000,000/km, and even more when significant earthworks are involved.
Many people do not realise that sealing a road is not the end of the story. Apart from ongoing maintenance of pavement failures, even a perfectly good sealed pavement requires periodic resealing. Under normal conditions, the sun alone causes the gradual deterioration of a bitumen surface, causing it to become brittle. If it is not resealed periodically, the surface will ultimately crack and break up.
The industry standard return period for a sealed road is 7–12 years, and for major rehabilitation is 30–50 years. Council’s current funding supports a reseal interval of around 22 years, and a rehabilitation interval of around 110 years, so we are steadily losing ground on this front. The difference between best and actual practice is what is commonly referred to as the infrastructure backlog, a problem facing most NSW councils, rural councils in particular.
Just to complete the picture, resheeting, which is the resurfacing of unsealed roads (not to be confused with simply grading them), costs $20,000–$25,000/km,, with a pavement life of 7–10 years. Council is currently running at around 30 years between resheets of its gravel roads.
Of course, this is not all there is to road maintenance. There are also the routine activities such as patching potholes, and the maintenance of signage, guide posts and railing. Fortunately, it’s a little easier to manage these activities, so if you notice a pothole opening up, or damaged signs, guide posts of protective railing, please report them to council. We can only fix the things we know about.
On top of the roads themselves, there are those 121 bridges to maintain, all from the same budget. But that’s a story for another time.