OUR ROADS ARE BREAKING DOWN

Sadly, it’s true to say that Darwin‘s roads are breaking down and breaking down badly.

Every time we have a decent fall of rain during the wet season, the road becomes littered with potholes. They just break out everywhere.

A lot of that has to do with the fact that the sub-servicing of our roads puts very little depth into the underside of the road surface.

Not only have our roads deteriorated to the point where potholes are now men’s placed upon the top of potholes that were previously fixed, but many of our road surfaces are becoming crazed or jigsaw-like with the surface breaking down.

Driving on many of our roads is now like driving on a macadamise set of corrugations. The undersurface of the road is so broken down that fixing is becoming almost impossible.

A great deal of responsibility for the breakdown of our roads, even our newer express words is because insufficient attention has been given to consolidating the undersurface before the roads are laid.

Maintenance is constant and the need for maintenance is growing and growing all the time. This is very economic but the minimal way things are done is not only in the Northern Territory but around Australia.

Compare this with the way motorways and major roads are laid in many parts of America, where there is a substantial base of concrete upon which the road surface is laid. That is even more the case in Europe where huge amounts of money are spent on laying down cubic metres of concrete upon which the roads are laid.

The beauty of this methodology is the maintenance becomes negligible by comparison to Australia

So many things in Australia are built on the cheap it’s not only roads but other infrastructure and major buildings as well. They begin to break down into maintenance needs almost as soon as they constructed

Another example of AUSTRALIA getting it wrong.