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?
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 Problem^TM^!
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?