Rural and livestock carriers question road closure notifications

The Department of Transport said yesterday 442 roads were still closed in Victoria

Increasing concerns are being raised about which roads are open, and which are closed, with Livestock and Rural Transporters Association of Victoria president Russell Borchard saying the notification system was "a shambles".

Rural Councils Victoria chair Mary-Ann Brown said the organisation had initially sought election commitments of $400 million, in additional road funding, over the life of any incoming government.

But she said that figure was "relatively small beer" when it came to fixing the flood damage.

Cr Brown said Local Government NSW had declared a statewide roads emergency, estimating the damage bill in that state to be $2.5 billion.

"The RCV committee will have a session on Friday afternoon, to try and get a bit of a sense of what the extent of the damage is," Cr Brown said.

"We are going to need a lot of money to get the roads back into a reasonable state - while it's not an informed figure, we are talking potentially billions of dollars."

Infrastructure needed to be "built back better" to stand up to the next disaster, she said.

"This is the peak time of the year to repair roads, as generally conditions are drier and better for that work," Cr Brown said.

Mr Borchard said the state of the roads was terrible - "that's a result of no maintenance, over the years, as well as the floods," Mr Borchard said.

"The biggest problem we are finding, on a day-to-day basis, is the VicRoads app for road closures isn't being updated the way it needs to be updated.

"The councils aren't passing information through - so, in some instances, we have staff going hundreds of kilometres out of their way, because they believe the roads are shut, but have been reopened.

"It's a shambles, it's been completely mismanaged, and it's costing the Victorian economy and businesses a power of money, for no reason.

"It adds to everything - animal welfare, driver welfare, and it makes it so hard to manage anything because you don't know what information is correct."

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Manangatang grain grower Brian Barry junior said additional costs were being incurred, when carting grain to Melbourne.

"The Loddon Highway has been closed at Kerang and the Calder has been shut at Sea Lake and Charlton, so we have had to go down via Hopetoun, through Horsham and Ballarat, which has obviously cooked everyone's logbooks, as it's only three trips week you can make," he said

"I think its added 150-odd kilometres to get into Melbourne - they are running out of hours in a day, which makes it an overnight trip."

Drivers needed rest breaks and access to amenities, such as showers and additional costs could not be passed on, he said.

The roads were "so rough it's frightening - there are lumpy bits and bumpy bits and holes".

With 300 millimetres of rain in the last two months - "in eight days we had more rain than we had all of last year" - shire roads were feeling the brunt of the weather.

"All of our little side, dirt roads are impassable, because of water laying between the hills and there have already been vehicles getting stuck in them," he said.

He believed state government legislation prevented councils from putting in spoon drains, or draining water off the road, "due to environmental and cultural reasons".

"Council has instructed its crews that they are not allowed to move off the road envelope, so they can't maintain the drains," he said.

"There have to be studies done on every little spoon drain now, that's just such a crock."

He said he was also concerned fire trucks would get bogged on the roads, when trying to travel to emergencies.

'If you can get the water away from the edge of the road, they will stand up a bit better," he said.

In the Yarra Valley, producers were affected by the closure of the Melba Highway, between McIntyres Lane and Yarra Glen, due to flooding from the Yarra River.

The road has just been re-opened, with a 60-kilometre-an-hour speed restriction.

Yarra Valley Custom Meats owner and livestock producer Melissa White, Dixons Creek, said the closure had been very frustrating, in terms of business and her operation.

"We lost bridges, due to the flooding, all our hay paddocks are pretty wet, so that's delayed, and it's a long drive to town," Ms White said.

"All the supply trucks had to go the long way, and the drivers were all cranky.

"It's wearing out the roads, because they are not built for the big trucks."

She said her farm butchery business had been compromised, as the road closure added 50 minutes to the trip for customers who had to detour around Yarra Glen.

"The potholes are here one day, gone the next," she said.

"Then they come back again because they are not done properly as it's too wet."

Yarra Glen cattle producer Percy Stephens said part of his property had been flooded, so he had moved cattle off it.

"It's hard to say when can get them back, especially if this rain keeps coming down," he said.

Department of Transport regional transport chief Paul Northey said the Melba Highway, south of Yarra Glen, was one of 675 roads that had been re-opened, since October 13.

But he said more than 440 roads remained closed, across the state, after floods and extreme weather.

"A couple of days of warmer, drier weather has enabled us to make good progress on delivering short-term emergency repairs - in the past two days, we've been able to re-open more than 110 flood-impacted roads and patch more than 2300 potholes," Mr Northey said.

"We're continuing to keep an eye on the weather ahead of the weekend - with more rain potentially on the way, we're ensuring that we've got crews ready to respond right across the state."

A team of more than 500 workers had delivered short-term emergency repairs to get roads re-opened, including patching more than 65,190 potholes.

While every effort had been made to update the VicTraffic website and app as soon as roads were opened, more than 1,300 separate stretches of road had been manually logged on VicTraffic as being closed or heavily impacted by flooding between Thursday, October 13 and now.

This data was based on around-the-clock updates from emergency services, local councils and patrols by Regional Roads Victoria and VicRoads.

A spokesman said in many cases, the department was reliant on local councils and emergency services to notify it when roads re-opened.

If members of the public believed that a road was listed as closed in error, they could contact the dedicated RRV hotline on 133 778.

Swan Hill Rural City Council has been contacted for comment.