Ballarat's roads are straining under rapid population growth, mayor Daniel Moloney has acknowledged, with council repairs struggling to keep up.
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Amid concerns over horrific road surface damage across the city following a wet winter - and the damage to vehicles - Cr Moloney reiterated council's earlier call to move busier roads to the state government's jurisdiction, with the hope they'd receive more attention and funding.
Dyson Drive is one example, which has been repeatedly rejected for upgrade funding from the state and federal governments.
Council has pushed for the road between Remembrance Drive and Carngham Road to be fully duplicated, and eventually extended further south to Cuthberts Road to continue the Ballarat Link Road.
This plan has been criticised as more residential lots open up along the proposed route.
However, the need for a new approach is becoming more pressing - Cr Moloney said roads like Dyson Drive, while classified as local roads, were dealing with far heavier traffic volumes.
READ MORE: Anger at pothole issues across city
"We're seeking data on that at the moment to confirm it, but what we're really seeing is some significant extra demand on the roads at the moment as part of a growing city, and we understand that's frustrating for people," he said.
"There's a lot of work happening at the moment, partly it's playing catchup on fixing issues as they arise, but it's also about positioning the municipality better to cope with increased traffic volumes."
Ballarat's rapid growth is one aspect - Cr Moloney noted it's estimated about 2500 new residents are moving to the city each year, and with them comes an additional 1000 cars.
Infrastructure across the city is not keeping up, he said, and that means more potholes, particularly in high-growth areas seeing heavy truck traffic.
"At the moment, people are experiencing the growing pains as they sit in traffic and experience potholes," Cr Moloney said.
"Local roads are taking arterial traffic at the moment, and that's the biggest problem we've got - my take on it is we've failed in the past because the statistics have been at local road level, and they've now increased such that they meet the criteria for arterial roads.
"There's a couple of big strategic pieces of work under way at the moment with the state government to understand how a big city moves, and I'm keen to see us use new tools, like Google Analytics, to see how people move as well.
"We've got good relationships with the (state) Department of Transport, it's about turning them into tangible projects heading into next year's election period, I think that's a big part of our advocacy push, making a really clear and data-supported argument for how our future arterial roads will work."
Cr Moloney added council's maintenance program is continuing as winter ends - previously, council representatives have tried to explain the difficulties in keeping up with potholes amid a tight road maintenance budget and increasing serious complaints and requests for compensation.
As well as spot fixes for potholes and serious road damage, two resurfacing tenders have also been released on the city's outskirts.
Stretches of Cuthberts Road, including the first stage between Whites Road and Finches Road, and to the east of the Burrumbeet-Hillcrest Road, will be resurfaced and modernised.
Small sections of Gillies Road, between Sulky Road and Sweeney Road and between Glendonald Road and the Clunes-Creswick Road, will also have works done.
The Cuthberts Road section begins at the new roundabout, installed at Whites Road last year as part of federal government Black Spot funding, and continues to the edge of new housing developments.
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Cr Moloney said better solutions would be required, including improved public transport options - Ballarat's bus network still has not been reviewed, with the common attitude that its current setup, centred around train stations, does not reflect how people in the city actually get around, leading to lower use.
Problems will get worse as new growth areas open up, he added.
"If there are 2500 people, 50 busloads of people, who drive 1000 cars, add that every year, it's a cumulative impact on the city," he said.
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