scone.com.auNorman tired of unfulfilled road promises
TRACY Norman, Independent candidate for the by-election said the National’s need to provide urgent funding for Upper Hunter roads which are subject to higher daily heavy and over-sized vehicle traffic.
“Almost all of the Upper Hunter region and its councils are struggling with road maintenance and safety due to the unrelenting presence of Heavy Vehicles,” Ms Norman said.
“Muswellbrook Council has processed 1,826 Over-Size/Over-Mass (OSOM) permits alone from July 1, 2020 to March 31, 2021,” she said.
“That equates to an extra equal presence of over thirty million cars impacting Muswellbrook Shires road structure in that time. This does not include the general heavy vehicles who do not require a permit to move about,” she said.
Ms Norman pointed out issues with complex road funding calculations, which take into account factors such as road length, number and size of bridges, traffic volumes and population.
“The issue with the traffic volume is that it doesn’t take into account the fact that one truck and dog causes the equivalent damage to the roads as ten thousand cars. Yes, that’s correct, ten thousand cars, and yet it is counted as one traffic movement and funded accordingly,” Ms Norman said.
“If you think of Dungog who records 14 percent of its traffic as heavy vehicle movement and has an average flow of 1,400 to 1,500 vehicles per day and up to 4,000 vehicles per day across its regional road network, those heavy vehicles equates to almost two million cars using the roads in Dungog per day,” she said.
“Our road and bridge infrastructure is vital not only to local residents, but to our wine, agriculture, tourism, horse and mining industries, for the safety of our children travelling on the school bus, family members going to work and for the efficient movement of emergency vehicles” she said.
Ms Norman achieved record funding for Dungog during her time as Mayor. She said the National Party has a history of making funding announcements that are left undelivered and re-announced at a later date.
“On the twenty-first of February 2019, Michael Johnsen announced $16 million funding for Dungog’s bridges. Almost to the day, two years later, the Deputy Premier and Minister for Regional Transport and Roads announced the same funding again. Minister Toole then brought it up in Parliament that this funding had just been announced,” Ms Norman said.
“On the first of July 2020, Michael Johnsen announced funding for Salisbury Road, Paterson River Road and Summer Hill Road. This is the very same funding that the Minister and the Nationals Candidate, David Layzell were spruiking on Monday 26 April 2021,” she said.
“The residents in the Upper Hunter are tired of being taken for granted while at the same time being a cash cow for the government’s mining and water royalties. We need serious funding to fix our roads across the Upper Hunter, not recycled funding announcements which take us for fools,” said Tracy Norman.
For more information on where candidates stand: Voting 101: Upper Hunter by-election.
Tags: Dungog roads, heavy vehicle traffic, Independent, Tracy Norman, Upper Hunter by-election, Upper Hunter roads