Residents frustrated as council defends Kooringal Road upgrade delay and budget blow out

Roadworks on the final section of the 2.55km upgrade, between Mena Road and Vincent Road, were due to be complete by June after commencing in April.

In July, works were suspended due to a mix of bad weather and planning errors, prompting an apology from council to impacted residents.

Now works are due to recommence, after councillors voted to allocate an additional $925,000 in ratepayer funds to complete the project, and approved an extended end date of December 31 at Monday's General Council Meeting.

IN OTHER NEWS:

Kooringal Road residents welcomed news the upgrade will be completed but the extensive delays have worn thin for many.

Local resident Luke Hogan explained access limitations during roadworks that went on for months earlier this year were of significant inconvenience to residents and commuters.

While he accepted the annoyance as a fair trade for road improvements at the time, the length of time it has taken, and the extended delay has left him fed up.

"It's frustrating because we had no access, they blocked it all off and it did nothing at all, they pulled everything up and went off again," he said.

"I'm just frustrated they couldn't do it right the first time, it's the ratepayers money being wasted at the end of the day."

He said the works inconvenience people across the city.

"Kooringal road is full on between 7:00am and 8:30am of a morning, and between 4pm and 6pm at night so [the works] impact a lot of people going a lot of places," he said.

Council's operations director Warren Faulkner said the extra costs were inevitable and were only sought at this late stage because the $2.1 million Local Roads and Community Infrastructure grant that funded the project came on condition of works being done within 12 months.

He said because of the tight timeframe, council commenced works on an assumed design that turned out to be incorrect, saying had they been aware the works would have finished sooner, but cost the same.

"To undertake that sort of work was always going to take $3 million, but it was in the rush to get that done [in the timeframe] that we didn't do our normal processes in developing a design," he said.

Mr Faulkner said they expect to have the works completed by mid-December with warmer weather and less rain forecast.

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: