In announcing the second round of Fixing Country Roads, Member for Barwon Kevin Humphries would prefer to see the entire $500 million allocated to councils sooner rather than later.
Round Two funding of $50 million is part of a $500 million commitment from Rebuilding NSW to fix council-owned infrastructure that creates bottlenecks and hinders efficient freight transport. It will help repair council owned roads and bridges.
“The program is designed to better connect local roads to state highways and key freight hubs such as silos, saleyards, rail heads, supermarket distribution centres, industrial parks and depots to make it easier to move regional freight from paddock to port,” Mr Humphries said.
“$50 million is a good start, but there’s a zero missing.
“It’s no secret that there’s a huge backlog of road infrastructure projects across Western NSW and I don’t see the point in drip feeding $50 million a year for the next 10 years when the money’s already been set aside.”
Regional roads were handed over to councils under previous state governments without additional funding and councils are struggling to finance their upkeep.
“We need to take the lead on this and commit the funding so that councils can scope out the projects, apply for Federal Government funding and start budgeting,” he said.
Mr Humphries said he was raising this request formally with Minister for Roads, Duncan Gay and will continue his discussions when Parliament returns this week.
