Rural Councils Victoria has commissioned an evaluation of the state government's Fixing Country Roads program, which ended last year.
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President Mary-Ann Brown said the evaluation would establish the economic, social and community benefits of the program
It would also help assess whether the program could serve as a funding model for future roads maintenance and upgrades.
"What we are looking for is more funding to go to rural councils, because they have a significant network of local roads they are responsible for," Cr Brown said.
"There is a continual shortfall, it keeps coming up as an issue.
"The road network is the most critical network, in terms of getting around in rural areas."
Cr Brown said RCV had been doing presentations to individual councils and roads continually came up as one of the top priorities.
"The issue is that rural councils have significant road infrastructure they are responsible for."
Some of the larger councils were responsible for 5000-6000 km of roads but had a very small ratepayer base.
"Funding is just continuing to wind down."
Cr Brown said in the lead up to state and federal elections RCV would be looking to the research as an evidence base to seek further funding.
"Most councils received money from that program, which has been realy good and we would be looking for a continuation of that but also some increase in funding as well."
She said Mountain Vista Consulting was carrying out the evaluation, which was expected to be completed by November.
A state government spokeswoman said Fixing Country Roads was a two-year commitment, up until June 2020, to assist regional and rural Victorian councils.
""Fixing Country Roads was a two-year commitment to assist regional and rural Victorian councils.
"It's purpose was to deliver projects beyond the scope of their regular road maintenance programs, and one that helped to rebuild more than 140 kilometres of roads, upgrade almost 40 bridges and improve safety at more than 45 intersections.
"We know how important safe, reliable roads are for regional Victorians - that's why we're continuing to make major investments in maintenance, major projects and safety initiatives right across the network."
The program delivered more than 220 local roads projects.
The current regional road maintenance blitz meant, more than 1,000 individual road maintenance projects would be being delivered across the state, rebuilding, repairing and resurfacing more than 1,400 kilometres of regional roads.
The government had also invested a further $124 million in the road network in this year's budget, as part of the Building Works economic stimulus package.