Angry residents say not enough is being done to fix potholes through Ballarat's wet winter, fearing a serious accident or worse.
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Facebook groups like Ballarat's Worst Roads note the damage done to vehicles across the city, as roads continue to deteriorate through poor weather conditions - one post notes a "tyre-eating" pothole that opened on Tait Street on Friday that required a rapid response.
While potholes certainly aren't a new experience for Ballarat's fierce winter, the added concern is from the continuing population growth in the city - newly-built areas, where heavy construction traffic is still common, appear to be harder-hit.
While council has a $2 million reactive road maintenance budget, not every pothole can be fixed up quickly.
While winter drags on, council's focus is on making sure serious issues on heavily-trafficked areas are fixed first, with the rest to be looked at on a graded scale.
It's little comfort to residents, who say even newly-repaired roads are getting torn up - Ballarat's Worst Roads' Robert McIntosh said he was "dreading" a serious accident.
Council has online reporting methods for potholes and other road damage, but people are taking matters into their own hands, posting photos of problems getting worse online to share troublespots with other drivers.
"There's no visibility of what's going on in council," he said.
"They don't provide feedback to reports, you don't know when they've done anything apart from actually driving in the same place again.
"A classic is Dyson Drive, with a whole lot of new development going on, the roads are in really bad condition out there, and there's a whole lot of trucks and heavy vehicles fraying the edges, but at the same time, there's big potholes in the middle.
"We want council to raise their attention and priority on (road damage), and help other people avoid these dangerous situations, by increasing their awareness."
Council's infrastructure and environment director Bridget Wetherall said this winter was actually not as bad as previous years, according to data they'd received.
"Our planned works for our roads, our potholes, have actually decreased on the whole, no pun intended," she said.
"It is a reflection of the fairly wet weather we've had - there is a spate of potholes at the moment, but it's really no different to what we'd expect in these deteriorating, wet conditions."
She explained there are council regulations for "road rectification', under its road management plan.
Each issue has to be raised with council first and added to the official list, with an inspection to take place within three days.
"We have response times in which we have to fix that defect, depending on the severity of that and where it is,(and) the response time to fix it depends on the severity of it and where it is," Ms Wetherall said.
"For a (lesser-used road), it would be within 10 days, but that can depend on the severity of it, it's very dependent on the situation - if it was a major arterial road, there'd be a shorter response time, rectification response time would be within two days, then it goes out to three days, five days, 10 days, to a month for an unsealed minor road."
It's a "tricky" balancing act, particularly with a growing population and a short summer window for major roadworks.
"The more money we spend on potholes means the less we have to spend on other parts of the community," Ms Wetherall said.
"It's the fine line between what's the level of service the community wants, and if they want us to fix every pothole every year, we'll have to invest a lot more money upfront, then that money will be used up, and we can't allocate it to the myriad of other things.
"It's the level of service we offer, we're never going to be able to respond to every pothole immediately, and it comes at significant cost if that's what the community's seeking."
And it's not good news for people in developing areas either, sadly.
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"It's a challenge, we can only improve our approach when working in new developments and ensure that developers are delivering assets to our requirements," Ms Wetherall said.
"During the period of development itself, because there's a lot of traffic and heavy truck movements, we really just try to maintain, in the interim - if we have to do reconstruction works, once the heavy trucks have left, they're added to our list of works.
"We need the trucks there to do the work, and they'll have an impact on the roads, potentially, so we just have to work with them the best we can to go in and repair."
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