CREWS have worked overtime to repair thousands of potholes after heavy rain and flooding hit Lake Macquarie roads hard.
Pothole repairs have more than tripled in the past two years, costing the council $17.6 million in the last 12 months.
City works manager Matthew Brogan said it's been an exceptionally busy period for patching crews and contractors with demand spread right across the city.
"Motorists often vent their frustration about potholes and roads in sub-par conditions, but we really have been doing everything we can to get jobs done quickly, efficiently and effectively," he said.
"We've spent $17.6 million on patching, pothole repairs and resurfacing over the past 12 months, up from the $10.5 million we spent last year and $10.8 million the year before that."
Crews filled in more than 14,500 potholes in the 2022-23 financial year and more than 15,000 in 2021-22, with the annual long-term average at about 3500 pothole repairs.
A whopping 500,000sqm of asphalt has been laid in patching, pothole repairs and road resurfacing jobs in the last financial year.
That's the equivalent of an 83km continuous stretch of road, amounting to 56,000 tonnes of asphalt including 22,000 for patching alone.
Destructive floods that swept through the region last year left Hunter councils with mammoth repair bills, particularly in Singleton, Bulga, Raymond Terrace and Maitland.
NSW Labor announced a $670 million road repair fund in March, comprising $280 million from the Coalition's existing regional pothole repair program, a $193 million reallocation from the government's "failed" reclassification scheme and $197 million in new money.
The fund was criticised by one Hunter mayor who argued the plan to ditch the road reclassification program, which would see the state government take back responsibility of some local roads, would cripple councils in the long run.
Lake Macquarie council prioritises pothole repairs based on the amount of traffic on a particular road and the level of risk it poses to drivers.
Two full-time crews have been deployed to undertake the work, one in the city's east and the other in the west.
Mr Brogan said pothole repairs are a bit of a thankless task.
"The crews are often out in the worst conditions, and no matter how much we do there will always be demand for more to be done," he said.
"But I'm really proud of the effort our teams continue to put in to clear our backlog and keep roads serviceable."
The council also employs contractors for tasks like heavy patching, an alternative solution to individual pothole repairs that's less expensive and faster than replacing a road.
It maintains more than 1300km of roads across the city.
