By Harrison Borthwick
NEPEAN MP Anthony Marsh has written to the Premier of Victoria, Ben Carroll, offering the pothole tracker he built, roadtoruin.com.au, after the government announced it would be using taxpayer funds to build its own pothole tracker.
Carroll announced last week there will been a new taxpayer funded website to report and track potholes across the state duplicating, according to Marsh, the website that is already available to use.
Originally only rolled out for motorists in the Nepean electorate and then the Mornington electorate, Marsh has now rolled out the website statewide.
Marsh admits his new site is “unashamedly political” but said potholes and road maintenance have become one of the most important issues to people in his electorate.
Marsh also noted that his new software is much more effective than anything that is currently being used.
“The problem is, if you discover a road issue, you can already go to the VicRoads website and report it, but it’s not very intuitive. I have always found reporting local issues frustrating, often they’re text based, they will take the data and supposedly they will go and fix, but there’s no transparency and no visibility of that data,” said Marsh.
“But this website is just easy to use. For example if you report a pothole and put in the address of the farm next to you that’s two-hundred metres long, it’s not even close to where the pothole is. I wanted to use something geospatial and driven by maps. It’s very easy to use GPS in your car and report the issue within a couple of metres.”
According to Marsh since making his site available statewide on 1 September, its uptake and usage has been strong.
Over 130 potholes have been reported on the site since it became available statewide and potholes in forty-seven electorates have been reported.
“When the Premier came out and announced that they’re going to create a website to report potholes, I just had to laugh because I don’t think reporting is the problem,” said Marsh.
“The government knows the potholes are there, it’s about fixing them but it did incentivise me to go ‘Mine’s already there and it’s working, I might as well just make it Victoria wide’”.
Carroll announced in a media release on 30 August that Labor is investing an extra $352m to double the number of potholes fixed this year from 250,000 to 500,000, while the Victorian Liberal Party’s policy states it will invest $5b in road maintenance over four years, if elected.
First published in the Mornington News – 8 September 2026
