Heavy rain the last few years damaged the roads a lot suddenly, councils have limited budgets, lots of heavy trucks (potholes are almost all trucks, heavier cars are bad for many raisins but they don't really add much wear compared to delivery/freight trucks etc).
Maybe other cities have better road traffic and less freight by road?
More and more cars on the road. Increasing weights of those cars. More extreme weather (caused by consistent reliance on fossil fuels...such as to power cars). The solution: more and better public transport. More and better bike paths. More and better housing in places close to where people work, shop, and partake in leisure activities. And less reliance on fossil fuels, including moving what cars do remain (with emphasis on the need to reduce total number of cars significantly) to electric.
Whilst that is fine and it's a good solution, no other city in the country has roads as bad as Sydney, and I guess I just wanted to know why, or how, it ended up like that.
As well as all the other comments, a vouple to add,
Toll roads - practices minimising cost by owners.
Higher proportion of heavy vehicles on the roads, not just trucks, but SUVs and the Wanker Trucks.
Time of year, not a 100% on this, but i think potholes are more likely to form when there's wet weather
I'd say part of the problem lies with the responsibility to fix the potholes.
If I'm not wrong, the fixing of potholes falls under the councils (at least those potholes not in Motorways and such). And I'll bet that each council has different budgets and priorities.
Sprinkle a bit of border arguments if a pothole happens to be between councils, and you've made yourself a nice plate of Not My Problem^TM^!
I also wonder how much the population and area of Sydney affect this. Higher volume of cars degrades the road faster. Maybe we should use a measure of "potholes per capita" to be able to do an accurate comparison.
Funding... Not enough.
Climate... Two long spells of wet weather.
Development... Massive trucks everywhere.
Culture... Apathetic.
Politics... Only big business matters.
They are all good points. Every other city has these issues, but no other city has roads as bad as Sydney. Why the difference?
Perhaps @[email protected] 's comment paints a better picture of the issue. Maybe other cities are repaving more often rather than patching.