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Roads then & now

An Australian story, I'd be interested to see others opinions on this.
Yesterday I struck up a brief roadside acquaintance with an amiable gentleman who'd been off the road for 8 years, a consequence of his over imbibing. He said the thing that struck him most after returning to 2 wheels was how much the roads had deteriorated in that time. They certainly 'aint great in our part of the world, do others think they're getting worse?

Re: Roads then & now

The country lanes here in Devonshire, England are pretty poor, the local farmers keep buying bigger equipment which is doing more damage than ever, and the current system of repairs seems to be to patch some of the potholes but not all, I think its probably as bad now as I've ever seen it.

The main roads are OK but they seem to flood more, perhaps the council lengthsman has finally been lost due to a lack of money?

Rob

email (option): robmiller11(a)yahoo.co.uk

Re: Roads then & now

Bob
An Australian story, I'd be interested to see others opinions on this.
Yesterday I struck up a brief roadside acquaintance with an amiable gentleman who'd been off the road for 8 years, a consequence of his over imbibing. He said the thing that struck him most after returning to 2 wheels was how much the roads had deteriorated in that time. They certainly 'aint great in our part of the world, do others think they're getting worse?
The problem in Australia is the fiscal imbalance between the Federal Government who collects most of the money and the local councils who need the money to maintain the roads.
The feds never provide the councils with sufficient funds to carry out a proper maintenance regiem let alone build new roads & bridges.
So most councils have to rely on special revenue votes from the state & federal governments for road works which means the system gets corrupted because only the roads that are politically important to the state & federal governments get money.
It was made worse in NSW by the Greiner government who capped increases in council rates to 75% of the CPI 2 years in arrears.This was done to make landlords with large rental portfolios buckets loads of money . There is more to corruption than brown paper envelopes full of 50's. So now a lot of councils are getting less than 1/3 of the rate money now that they would have gotten without the cap.
Thus in NSW the kilometers of sealed roads is reducing each & every year as country councils rip up bitumen & revert to gravel roads because they can not afford to maintain tarred roads any more.
Things in Vic are different because Vic Roads funds all roads
You really notice it when you cross the border into Victoria. We can & do go to the ABR every year via a different route on all sealed roads.
You can not do that in NSW and it makes rally planning near impossible as in most places where it is nice to ride there are no quiet sealed backroads.

And finally you have to understand we have the highest bitumen road to tax payer ratio on the planet.
A few year back it was around 85 km per person.
The UK is around 40 meters / person
Interested in paying $ 3000/year rego fees to cover road repair, user pays is very popular on the conservative side of politics.

email (option): bsansw1@tpg.com.au

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