Maintaining our roads

Resealing work on residential streets is usually completed within a day. Typically, work crews will only be onsite for a few hours.

You should keep your car parked within your property. Cars should not be parked on the nature strip or street.  If you plan to go out during the day, please speak with the onsite traffic controllers or park your car in a nearby street outside of the planned work area.

Your street has probably been spray sealed.  This involves spraying the surface with hot bitumen and rolling in loose stones over the top to provide a hard wearing surface.  In order to ensure all the bitumen is covered, a little more stone is placed than may actually stick to the surface.  The loose stone is only a temporary issue and will diminish gradually over time. Any further stones that have not embedded into the road surface will be swept from the roadway by Council as part of Council's Street Sweeping program. During this time, all road users are encouraged to drive cautiously in these areas so to avoid further stones dislodging from the bitumen.

Streets that have been spray sealed before will normally be resurfaced with another spray seal. The original seal may have become worn and the stone may have become polished by traffic, giving the appearance of a smoother road.  Resealing renews the texture in the road that would have been there originally.  The new seal will also get smoother over time.

When the surface of a road ages the bitumen becomes brittle and cracks.  Cracks allow water to get in under the road and undermine the surface, leading to potholes and damaging the expensive pavement below the surface.  Most resurfacing is preventative to stop water damage before it occurs and avoid the cost of extensive repairs to the pavement.

The cost of maintenance works such as these are based on time to complete the works.  Allowing our contractors full and unhindered access to your street will ensure their time is used efficiently and that cost and inconvenience are minimised.  This type of work is necessary to maintain the local road network for the benefit of all residents and road users.

Council has an annual program of road surfacing to preserve the pavement in the most effective manner across the city within budget constraints.  Treatments are selected depending on the condition of the existing pavement, the road function and the traffic volumes.

Spray seals are used on low volume streets over existing surfaces to extend their life.  Where there is the presence of heavy vehicles or areas of high stress on the road pavement, such as at intersections/roundabouts, asphalt may be used as the resurfacing treatment.  Asphalt treatments are expensive and only used where spray seal treatment may not be suitable.  The most effective resurfacing treatment has been selected for your street.

If rain is forecast, Council will not resurface your street on the advertised day as the new surface must be placed on a dry surface.  You will receive new advice on the rescheduled date.