Road now 'beyond patching': resident

DAVID McCosker says you can pick up pieces of the Bangalow Road outside his Lagoons Grass farm, near Lismore.

“The problem is the volume of traffic, especially heavy vehicles and semi-trailers that go through here. The road floods and the road base doesn't get a chance to dry out before the heavy vehicles are back on it,” he said.

The road is in a terrible state and the RTA has reduced the speed limit from 100km/h to 60km/h along the damaged section.

Mr McCosker said there had been a number of patching jobs done on the road in the eight months he had been living there, but the short-term repair work was doing more harm than good.

“It's beyond that. There's more of a risk to windscreens and getting tar on your car than there is from the damaged road,” Mr McCosker said.

Another motorist said the damage was from work carried out by Rous Water when it built a pump station to take water from the Wilsons River.

But Mr McCosker disagreed.

“You can't blame anyone. It's just the amount of traffic, particularly trucks, and the sheer volume of water we have had this year,” he said.

An RTA spokesperson said the roads authority was planning reconstruction work on Bangalow Road at Lagoons Grass.

The work is expected to start early next year. Once complete the RTA will review the speed limit on the section of road.