Emergency Reconstruction Work for Key Regional Freight Route

Emergency reconstruction work is getting underway on Tatyoon North Road and Mt William Road to keep vital harvest freight moving.

Ararat Rural City Council CEO, Dr Tim Harrison expressed the importance of the project for the agriculture industry.

“These roads are some of the busiest in Western Victoria for the transport of grains over the harvest season,” Dr Harrison said.

“It serves as the main route to the Lakaput Bulk Storage Facility, taking heavy freight traffic carrying wheat, barley, canola and oats from across the Wimmera Southern Mallee.

The emergency works are a direct response to the failure of road pavements across a section of the road two weeks ago.

“Ararat Rural City Council has taken immediate action to reconstruct this section of road due to its importance as one of the region’s primary product to market routes.

“The reconstruction of 400 metres of road, will fix the existing pavement and protect against future failures.”

The total cost of the project is $287,303 is being funded by Ararat Rural City Council. Construction began on Monday, 1 February and will take two weeks for the works to be completed.

“The new section of road will be a stronger pavement than before to endure the heavy use it receives over this and future harvest seasons.

ROAD INVESTMENT

“This year Council have committed our single largest investment in roads ever, making up over 84% of our entire capital works budget for 2020/21.

“We recognise that investment in first and last mile freight routes are vital to keep industry moving, however, at present the responsibility for construction and maintenance falls largely to local government.

“While support from the Australian and Victorian governments is available, the sunsetting of programs, caps on allocations, plus the competitive funding environment, significantly limits our ability to adequately respond to capacity constraints on the network.

"We're almost becoming desensitised when we hear about government investment in a billion dollars here and a billion dollars there. For small rural councils like ours, the conversation is about scale.

"I can guarantee, an extra one million dollars provided to our Council each year for road maintenance would be transformative, but its impost for the state and federal treasury would appear as a rounding error.

“Local government needs more recognition of its role managing road links between freight origins and destinations to ensure investment is there to rapidly carry out critical works when they are needed most.”