A lot has been said about the state of the Midland Highway and the recent roadworks at Constitution Hill. What I haven’t seen however, have been pictures of the giant mess that has been left behind by the contracted workers.
We drove down the Midland Highway yesterday, like we do most days of the week. Only this time, I had my camera at the ready and I took photos of the mess.
(Sorry about the quality of some of them, they were taken from a moving car.)
Now for my Mainland and International readers, the Midland Highway is the main highway connecting the north and south of the state together. There have been a lot of deaths on the road this year and the politicians are wondering why? This is why.
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The shiny patches you can see here collect black ice in the winter. This is the start of the brand new piece of road put in in the last few months.
Something to keep firmly in mind as you drive down Constitution Hill.
On the left hand side, you can see a strip of road that is newer than the rest. This particular piece was replaced 4 times by my count and that is only what I saw being done. Every time it rained, the side of the road washed away.
A closer look at the patching that’s been done along the left hand side. The patching has been done with the ‘slick and smooth’ bitumen, making driving on this particular patch in the rain/ice a nightmare.
More patches. Remember, this is BRAND NEW road you’re looking at.
The intersection. This bit has been done and redone and then done again. It’s still patchy.
The change to extremely smooth bitumen happens on the worst possible part of the road. This corner collects black ice in winter and some days, it never defrosts entirely. A few years back, four student nurses were killed here in this exact spot. If I’d been using a wide angle lens, you probably would have been able to see the flowers placed by their family in this photo, just ahead of the truck.
Yet more patches. These ones are falling apart already.
It doesn’t take long for the patches to fall apart. You can see this happening here.
The intersection at Bagdad is a mess of patches. In the rain, the water sits on the road here and you have to guess at where your lines sit.
I took some more photos as we were coming home. These next few are taken while heading North along the Midland Highway.
Brand new road? Does it look like it?
Near Kempton, the road degenerates into a mess of potholes, which the Council fixes by turning into lumps instead.
Just past Kempton here.
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You can’t deny that our Highway is a total mess, yet our Politicians keep doing just that. It’s not safe to drive on in good weather and when it rains or is icy, the road is positively deadly.
A lot of people have been complaining about the Midland Highway. This is why.
Not just your roads Veronica. Ours are mostly awful too! Sorry to say this but road-building does not seem to be something Australia does well. Within weeks of any stretch new road opening or repairs completed, it is pot-holed by the first bit of rain (snow and ice are rare over here in WA)and the patching process begins. If the roads were made with a decent layer of quality tarmac they would last a lot longer and be much safer.
Ours didn’t even wait to get finished before it started falling apart. It’s crap, it truly is.
That is awful, really, god-honest awful and absolutely unacceptable. ‘Patching up’ roads never, ever works. They’ve literally got to be done all over again, right from digging into the ground. I hope you send these photos and this blog article to whoever will be a) embarassed and b) able to do something about it.
I’ve send a link to the Premier, David Bartlett, as well as to the opposition leader Will Hodgman, although no reply yet.
WOW! That is terrible! Our roads here in USA are not much better. I live in Oklahoma and it seems they are always doing construction to fix our roads. In fact my car needs a front-end alignment because of all the pot holes!! I hope something is done soon to fix your roads!
I know exactly where you are coming from Veronica as I live at Kempton myself these roads are a disgrace, it makes my blood boil as they have spent so much money “fixing” the highway and I honestly think its worse all the pot holes and uneven slick surfaces are an accident waiting to happen. What crap work for them to be falling apart already and the politicians wonder why there are so many deaths on this road it is unacceptable……….
Looks a lot like the roads over here on the mainland. None of them are ever fixed properly. Wonder where all our road taxes go? So which do you prefer, bone jarring potholes or lumps that make you bounce out of your seat? I do hear your frustration though, especially when it comes to the deadly black ice. If politicians had to drive on these roads daily,(themselves not their chauffeurs), I bet a better repair job would get done.
When we lived back in our cozy mountain town the roads were like that too. So dangerous and a pain to drive on.
Totally freaks me out that you guys drive on the left side of the road too!
Our roads are equally bad here in Melbourne.. There is a stretch of road, (just near home), where I drive on the wrong side of the road (as long as there’s no on coming traffic), to avoid the black ice/ rain, on certain days! Our government is quite happy to take the tax payers money but they suck when it comes to spending it!!
Um… you have NOTHING on Missouri roads. NOTHING. Will have to get my camera out myself sometime when I’m brave. I was looking at the road there and getting mighty jealous, actually…
i hope they get on top of it very soon..
Hi Veronica,
I often enjoy your blog updates form my work desk in Ottawa Canada. (At lunch I might add.) : )
Your road trouble is completely unnesessary. Clearly the contractor has failed to put in adequate foundation for the road. Patching will not solve this oversite. And shame on the politicians for not enquiring into the inadequacies of their own engineers who should have been overseeing the contractors better. Drive safe,
Kim
PS I’m looking forward to an update on where things are at with your Mares or the search for their replacement.
I cannot believe that K Rudd came down the Highway a few months back and didn’t seem to notice any of the mess. It is so slippery.
How many more people need to die before they will do something?
The worst part of our road here is directly in front of the hospital.
*shakes head in wonder seeing they really don’t need the business*
rain , ice and very thick fog as well i know we have come down that highway in the dead of winter and if nothing is done properly instead of wasting tax payers money and everybody elses someone else will die.so fix the bloody roads
Not having much experience in this area—
What causes the roads to disintegrate so quickly? Is it heavy storms, or is it shoddy craftsmanship?
We’re really spoiled here in Orange County with our roads— the cities can’t afford to have them anything less than perfect or they’d be buried beneath a HUGE pile of lawsuits.
Hey there… I think the problem is,, YOUR DRIVING ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD,,,, have a great holiday and keep your chin up. Hope all is calm with you as calm as it CAN BE.
To imply that the deaths of the four students (only 2 of whom were in fact nursing students) had anything to do with the current state of the road, or with black ice, is absurd and misleading. The current roadworks are a response to that accident, one that occurred because a young girl was driving too fast on very wet roads.
The roadworks are carried out for DIER by contractors – and the fact that the roadworks are failing may indicate that the contractors are useless but should not be used as an argument against the government which is spending millions trying to fix this road. To use emotional blackmail regarding the deaths of the four students is simply inappropriate; of course nobody would willingly allow that to happen. That’s why they’re trying to fix the road.
The extremely heavy rain we have had in Tassie this year has caused problems everywhere – speak to any builder, gardener, road contractor – you cannot fix these things when it continues to pour with rain. At least they have got the divider in place and I’m sure that DIER, as much as anybody else, are aware of the problems with the road surface and are working to fix them as soon as weather, resources and contracting arrangements permit.
This kind of “everything should be perfect and fixed immediately” commentary is unproductive and unrealistic.
Lucy –
If the contractors are contracted by the Government and then they do a useless job, isn’t it up to the Government to spot that and rectify the problem? Either by sending them back to fix it, or contracting someone else to do it? It is the Government’s fault that this road is falling apart, as they have obviously failed to keep tabs on their contractors.
I stand corrected on the student nurses, I thought it was reported that all four girls were students. One death is one too many.
I understand that you cannot fix things while it continues to pour with rain, but we’ve had relatively dry weather for the last 6 or so weeks and nothing has been done to fix the damage caused by the rain.
I drive on that road, every single day, and the current state of it is simply unacceptable.
Oh and Lucy? If you’d left me a valid email address, I would have emailed you my response. However, you failed to do that. I stand publicly behind my opinion of the road.
If the government spent our taxes on fixing the roads rather than employing spin doctors like Lucy to pretend everything’s perfectly fine, then perhaps we’d be in better shape. I’m not sure how the ineptitude of contractors hired by the government isn’t the government’s fault, and please Lucy, don’t waste any more taxpayers’ money trying to spin white into black. The midlands highway is a disgrace, it has been a disgrace for a long time, and having been in power far too long already, the government has absolutely nobody to blame but itself.
Lucy, It is this governement’s responsiblity to fix the highway. There is no point being pedantic and trying to score points here. I drive on this road every day and it is a horrid dangerous road.
The divider is an accident waiting to happen in itself, it has made a bad stretch of road worse.I am pleased that I dont live up Pritchards lane as access has now become a great big pain.
The Midlands Highway needs to be a dual carriageway. It is that simple. I don’t care which bunch of politicians is in power I just want the bloody road fixed.
Now safely back in the UK I can revisit these pictures of so-called ‘highways’ in Tasmania with a mixture of horror and disbelief. Horror because I know they are really as bad as they look in the pictures and disbelief because it is only a miracle that more people aren’t killed on them. When I lived there one of my first experiences was of major pot-holes on the East Tamar Highway. There is a section just after the Rocherlea turn off that always washes out in the rain. Worst thing about it is that its position on the hill means unless you remember it you cannot see it until too late. I watched a P plater wreck his suspension on it one wet afternoon – he wasn’t going too fast just didn’t see it. Years later I revisited and it rained heavily – sure enough the highway washed out again in exactly the same spot, luckily I have a good memory and remembered where not to position the car. The problem seems to be inadequate road foundations initially and obviously inadequate attempts to repair holes when they appear ( a couple of blocks tossing tar into the hole really doesn’t cut it and is a complete waste of time and money). The roads are hopelessly under-sized for the massive trucks that now dominate them and both Launceston and Hobart need proper dual carriageway by-passes. Unfortunately roads, and transport in general in Tassie have been put in the too difficult box for many years now and look to be left there indefinitely while various authorities do nothing – apart from polite signs telling you the road will be icy.
Jane, you’ve nailed it exactly.
This must be a world-over problem that nobody really seems to care about. My guess is that it’s a guaranteed source of income for the contractors who continually build roads badly and the government continually doles out money from the collective budget for it, with disregard of the kind of work being done, and why would they care if they aren’t driving those roads. My city likes to tear out perfectly good streets and sidewalks and replace them… a few meters here and there, but never really works on the HUGE problem areas. Currently, in the worst economic downturn in 70 years, my city is replacing stop lights with flashing arrows… and nobody knows what to do with flashing arrows because we’ve never SEEN them before. Do I go? Do I stop? WHAT DO I DO??? Excellent spending of money. The biggest concern is who will be the one who dies because the drivers had no idea what to do at that intersection.
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