The program will see works conducted on 120 sites across western Victoria with a total value of $12.6 million.

The City of Ballarat will receive $792,000 for resurfacing works on the Midland, Glenelg  and Sunraysia Highways, as well as the Ballarat-Buninyong Road. 

The Moorabool Shire will have extensive resurfacing works undertaken on 2.5 kilometres of Geelong-Bacchus Marsh Road and 2.7 kilometres of Bacchus Marsh-Gisborne Road.

Further work will take place on Bungaree-Wallace Road and Bacchus Marsh Road. 

In the Hepburn Shire almost six kilometres of the Midland Highway between Daylesford and Guildford along with two kilometres of Clunes-Creswick Road will undergo resurfacing works.

An additional two kilometres of Bungaree-Creswick Road at Wattle Flat will also benefit from improvements. 

Moorabool Shire Council Mayor Paul Tatchell said the funding was good news for the region. 

“It is an incredible battle just trying to keep up, those roads were built for horse and carts and now we put B-doubles on them,” he said.  

“It is about safety at the end of the day.

“At the end of the winter some of the roads are pretty rough and I see them because I am on them all the time.

Cr Tatchell said while the funding was welcomed, more was needed to keep up with the demand to fix rural roads. 

“For us to even scratch the surface, $1 million doesn’t go that far,” he said.  

“We had the biggest roads program in the shire for probably 15 years and it was out of necessity, the roads were getting unsafe.”

Minister for Roads and Road Safety Luke Donnellan said he believed the previous government had been “long on talk and short on action” in terms of funding for regional communities. 

“The Andrews Labor government has made an unprecedented investment in improving safety on regional roads and that is why we are spending $1 billion to upgrade unsafe and congested roads and level crossings in regional communities,” he said.  

Last week the Victorian government also announced a $2 million roundabout would be constructed at a well known accident hotspot, Ballarat-Carngham Road and Haddon-Windermere Road. Works are expected to start on that project at the beginning of 2016 with the roundabout to be completed by mid-2016.