Doyles Rd residents have warned it’s only a matter of time until a serious accident happens along Shepparton’s alternative truck route as the road deteriorates.
Residents gathered on the side of the road on Monday alongside state Member for Shepparton Suzanna Sheed.
With trucks roaring past over potholes despite temporary speed limits of 40km/h — put in place due to the poor state of the road — residents said they’d never seen the road in a worse state.
Mel Lynch lives at the southern end of Doyles Rd and drives three quarters of the length of it twice a day to get to and from work.
‘You spend a lot of time dodging potholes ... you spend more time watching for potholes than you do watching the other traffic,” she said.
“I’ve managed to avoid most of them doing too much damage to my car but you do have to slow right down and go across the centre line, with traffic coming the other way.
“When it's dark and raining, you can't see the potholes because everything's wet. So you just hit them.”
Gary Hawthorn lives at the northern end of the road and has been using it since it was designated as a truck route in the 1980s.
“This the worst I’ve ever seen it,” he said.
“It’s like it’s been walked away from. Every year there’s more traffic.”
Lorraine Threlfall needed a new tyre after hitting a sharp pothole in the dark along Doyles Rd last month.
“I saw the pothole late and my choices were to drive off into a ditch or into an oncoming truck,” she said.
“If I was driving a little Suzuki I’d have disappeared into the pothole.”
She said she thought she’d blown a tyre when it happened, and when the tyre went flat days later she took it to a mechanic who found there was a bubble on the inside of the tyre.
Peter and Leanne Raditsas live on an orchard on Doyles Rd. Mr Raditsas said the state of the road was “terrible”.
“You sit here for five minutes and look at it and it’s terrible, and it’s not going to get any better with trucks using it,” he said.
“You’ll notice cars veering into the middle of the lane to dodge potholes.”
Mr Raditsas wants the road re-done, with any roadworks done “falling apart” within months due to the heavy use from trucks.
“Our regional roads are really in a horrible state and this is a good example.” — State Member for Shepparton Suzanna Sheed.
He said it was disappointing to see the road in such a state.
“You’d understand if it’s some back road that’s hardly used, but it’s so heavily used,” he said.
The road isn’t used only by trucks, with Grahamvale Primary School and Orrvale Primary School parents using it to access both schools.
The Shepparton Bypass has long been spruiked as a solution to help alleviate the traffic on Doyles Rd, but residents don’t believe it will be built soon enough to make an impact on the road.
“It’s not like they’re going to start it tomorrow and finish it on Wednesday,” Ms Lynch said.
State Member for Shepparton Suzanna Sheed said country roads were in a state of disrepair and the Victorian Government needed to come to the table.
“I think between now and the election it’s a really important topic, and it’s all over the state — we don’t want to be left out if there’s work to be done,” she said.
“Our regional roads are really in a horrible state, and this is a good example.
“This is what the north-south route will be like, and it'll just keep getting worse.”