Wagga resident calls out council of Lake Albert Road conditions

Emergency services were called to Lake Albert Road at about 2pm on Friday following reports of a crash involving two vehicles.

No one was injured in the crash, but Mr Dodwell, who caught the tail end of the incident, said the young female driver was noticeably upset.

"That's the straw that broke my back," he said.

"I go up Bourke Street dodging potholes, I go up over the bridge on Edmonson Street that desperately needs to be fixed and I come up Lake Albert Road dodging potholes.

"You become accustomed to it, but someone unfamiliar with the road doesn't know what they're driving towards and it creates an accident."

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Mr Dodwell believes the road's eroded condition contributed to the accident.

"It was a mess, it was dangerous," he said.

"It's dangerous for motorists to drive on all of these roads."

Wagga City Council undertook road works along Lake Albert Road in May and on Monday commenced road works again.

Mr Dodwell said over the last 12 months the road has been repaired by council at least three times which leads him to question if the method used to repair roads is a good one.

"Why didn't they do it properly in the first instance? Is it cheaper to do it once, or four, five times?" he said.

"Three weeks later and it comes back."

Council's director of infrastructure services, Warren Faulkner, said the work which began on Monday were planned months in advance.

"The final bitumen seal applied to Lake Albert Road is part of the rehabilitation and stabilisation project on the stretch of road between the Kooringal Road roundabout and Eastlake Drive, which began in autumn," he said.

"An initial primer seal was applied during the works carried out in May this year as a temporary wearing course and the application of the final bitumen was always scheduled to take place in November this year.

"Council's intent had always been to start the final seal program on the projects that were undertaken in the cooler months of May and June as part of its 2022-2023 program of pavement renewal and improvement projects, once the weather had warmed up in spring."

Linemarking works will be carried out once the road repairs have been completed.

The issue isn't unique to his suburb, according to Mr Dodwell, who said the issue around eroded streets and roads stretches right across the city.

"I know funding is tight, but it's their job to get the finances from the government and if they can't, they need to let the public know so we can vote them out next time," he said.

"On one hand they're saying they can't get the finances to do the roads properly so they have to patch them up in the meantime, but on the other hand, they're saying give us some ideas to put playgrounds in for the next 20 years. It doesn't make sense."

Mr Dodwell said it is also unfair to the staff who have to go out time and time again in the heat to work on the repairs.

"The men on the grounds are doing the work, it's the people in suits behind the desk who aren't doing their jobs," he said.

"It's time ratepayers of Wagga put their complaints into the press and make their points known - they need to bring it out into the open so bureaucrats start to get embarrassed."

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