New data reveals appalling state of South Coast's major roads

As part of its analysis of roads across the state, AusRAP put together information on 1456km of roads on the South Coast and Illawarra, and found none of it qualified for the highest safety rating of five stars.

South Coast NRMA director Marisa Mastroianni said only two per cent of the region's roads received a four star rating, 26 per cent were given a three-star rating, and 45 per cent was given two stars.

"Alarmingly, 28 per cent received the lowest one star rating," Ms Mastroianni said.

This contrasts with AusRAP's aim of having 80 per cent of transport occur on roads at or above three-star level by 2030.

AusRAP project lead Keith Simmons said the safety assessment was carried out by Transport for NSW and applied only to major roads.

"That's all national highways, all state roads, and the regional roads which are all the big connectors that do the bulk of the transport task," he said.

Ms Mastroianni said there was money available to improve roads throughout the region.

"Australians contribute a substantial amount of money towards the construction and maintenance of roads and expect safe roads in return," she said.

"In 2023 alone, Australian contributed $23 billion to the Federal Government through fuel excise.

"This is money that should be going towards making roads safer, yet the condition of roads remains poor and, in some cases, dangerous," Ms Mastroianni said.

NRMA chairperson Tim Trumper said while the lack of maintenance on roads throughout the state was one issue, access to accurate and timely information was another.

He said the NRMA had to go through a Government Information Public Access request to gain access to the AusRAP rating of nearly 19,000km of roads across the state.

"And by then it was almost two years old," Mr Trumper said.

AusRAP provided "a comprehensive, data-driven approach to rating the safety or our roads," he said, but that was of little help if people could not access the information.

"If motorists knew which local roads were rated five star and those rated one star, they would be informed to make better decisions behind the wheel," Mr Trumper said.

"It can also help drive choices on how we prioritise road funding."

But that issue was on its way to being rectified, according to Mr Simmons, who said Transport for NSW was working on publishing an interactive map showing safety ratings.

That map will be publicly available this year, as a first in Australia, he said.

"So you can actually see that if you choose this route you'll have this level of safety, but if you choose that route you'll be able to travel on a safer route and what it will mean to you," Mr Simmons said.

"Because it's a massive process, they are revising that at 20 per cent a year, so every five years they'll have a total refresh of their data."

While everyone would naturally want all roads lifted to five star standards, Mr Simmons said with limited resources available the focus needed to be on ensuring the roads carrying 80 per cent of the traffic were at a minimum of a three star standard.

"We've got a finite resource, and we've got to spend it where it's going to give the most benefit for the most people," he said.

And while the Federal Government collected billions in fuel excise each year, not all of it could go towards building new roads or repairing existing roads, according to Mr Simmons.

Road funding also meant building new fire and ambulance stations, and providing hospital beds and rehabilitation for road trauma victims because, "One of the costs of building roads is having a system in place to deal with the consequences of road trauma," he said.