COUNCIL has provided an update on road pavement maintenance following July’s Urgency Motion.

From July 2021 to June 2022, Council repaired over 54,000 potholes.

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Port Stephens Council Asset Section Manager, John Maretich, said the optimum management of road pavement has the road surface recoated/resealed on average every ten to fifteen years.

“Like most Government Road owners in Australia, the funds needed to manage our pavements in the best/optimal way require more funds to be spent on reseals than are available.

During drought conditions, this shortfall in funds can go unnoticed to the general public but once periods of rainfall occur the road failures start to appear, as we have seen,” he said.

Mr Maretich said the optimal resealing budget at Port Stephens Council should be $7.4 million, though the available budget is $1.6 million

Once a road has failed, there are three main typical methods of pavement management.

These include pothole patching, heavy patching and road pavement rehabilitation.

“Filling potholes is a very short-term measure to provide road users a safe surface to drive on and it can last from days to years depending on the amount of rain and how wet the pavement is,” Mr Maretich said.

Heavy patching is a road repair technique to remove a small, failed section of the pavement and replacing it with more suitable layers of gravel, however is quite expensive for a temporary measure and is in the order of $100/m2.

The final method is road pavement rehabilitation which replaces or strengthens the existing gravel layers and resealing the whole width of the road for long lengths.

“Rehabilitated roads provide a new pavement and are less expensive than a heavy patch over the life of the asset and due to the economy of scale.

“Depending on the required works, a pavement rehabilitation can cost in the order of $140/m2 – $250/m2, noting that these works can last three times longer than a heavy patch,” Mr Maretich said.

Pothole patching is funded from Council’s recurrent Operational Budget.

“Given the limited Council operational budget, increasing the pothole activity would result in a reduction of another service that Council supplies the Community,” Mr Maretich said.

Road pavement rehabilitation is funded from the Capital Budget.

Of the $19.8 million that will be allocated to road pavement works in this financial year, $10.7 million is from grants, $2.2 million is from externally restricted funds with the remaining $6.8 million is from internally restricted funds.

Council currently has a Capital Budget of $59.6 million of which $26.6 million is externally funded via grants.

By Tara CAMPBELL