Money that should be used to fix potholes, crumbling road shoulders and cut roadside grass is being diverted to repair damaged wire rope barriers, Warrnambool MP Roma Britnell says.
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Last year alone the wire barriers were damaged 3000 times, according to the South West Coast MP and opposition spokesman for rural roads, but she said she had been unable to get an answer on how much those repairs cost.
The opposition spokesman for rural roads said that under questioning at Public Accounts and Estimates Committee hearings this week, VicRoads chief executive officer Robyn Seymour revealed that repairs to wire rope barriers that have sustained damaged were being funded from VicRoads' routine maintenance fund as well as the Traffic Accident Commission.
Ms Seymour also stated that ordinarily the fund was used for maintenance such as fixing potholes and cutting grass on roadsides.
Mrs Britnell said that as the rollout of wire rope barriers continued, it was expected that maintenance costs would also rise.
"How many potholes will go unfixed? How many roadsides will have dangerously long grass because money is being spent on fixing wire rope barriers?," she said.
"Our regional and rural roads are already in a shocking state and under the Andrews Labor Government they are only going to get worse."
Mrs Britnell said the revelations that came out of the committee hearing showed that the focus was not on improving roads but putting wire barriers up.
"There's going to be a hell of a lot of money to maintain them at the expense of road maintenance," she said.
Mrs Britnell said this was to disadvantage of country drivers where the road toll had spiked.
She said at a recent roads summit where there was talk of zero tolerance for deaths on our roads, there was also admissions that our roads were poor.
"Why should we not have zero tolerance for poor roads? Why aren't we investing in the roads?," she said.
There are more wire rope barriers earmarked for the south-west between Warrnambool and Panmure.
"If they place them in the right place they'll be good," she said.
"But what's the point of roping people in on unsafe roads that are not maintained to begin with?"
She said in countries overseas where the wire barriers worked well, they were placed on much wider roads. But that was not always happening here, she said.
"I pulled over on the side of the road and there was just enough room for me to get out on the passenger side, and if you opened your door on the driver's side a truck could easily collect it," Mrs Britnell said.
"The trucks and cars have a barrier on their right-hand side so they can't pull out of my way.
"If you've got to pull over and change a tyre you just couldn't, you just wouldn't."
Mrs Britnell said wire rope barriers were being rolled out without any consideration for whether the area was suitable, or that road shoulders had been upgraded to cope with the new infrastructure.
She predicted spending on repairs to damaged barriers and road damaged caused by wire rope wire barriers would increase in the next three to 20 years.
A government spokesman accused Mrs Britnell of trying to score cheap political points off made-up figures and mistruths.
"The budget clearly shows that spending on regional road maintenance has doubled since Roma and her Liberal and National mates were in government," he said.
"We make no apologies for rolling out safety barriers across Victoria - because we know they save lives."
The government said every barrier hit represented a potentially serious or even fatal crash prevented, and repairing damaged barriers was just as important as installing them.
He said the cost of repairing them was a small part of the overall maintenance spend.
Regional Roads Victoria had rebuilt, repaired and resurfaced more than 1500 kilometres of regional roads this year and the most recent budget ensured the same would happen again next financial year, he said.
Last financial year, the TAC contributed more than 50 per cent of barrier repair costs through The Towards Zero Action Plan, he said.
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