Dangerous Road Surfaces
It can't just be me that's noticed the appaling state of our roads. I've driven around a fair bit of tarmac in the last year and find my eyes drawn more and more towards the gaping hole in the road in front of me, taking me away from my normal forward vision.
I've been like a drunk driver weaving around these shock absorber bashers but do not have the option when towing. How do bikers and cyclists cope? Seriously. How? I would hate to be on 2 wheels at present.
Time we stopped being a third world country and started fixing our infrastructure.
Thanks for listening.
Comments
-
That's all thanks to your local and/or county council and their ability or non ability for their roads portfolio holder to carry out their job. Down in kent we have roads that would embarrass a third world country. I agree it is about time that such 'managers'
were held to account. Of course, they will blame lack of funds from central government but that is merely to cover their own backsides and inability to do the job they are paid to do!0 -
Totally agree, Wherenext, our roads here in East Lancashire are in an awful and really dangerous state. Pot holes everywhere, ungritted when ice / snow forecasted. My husband cycles and I really worry about him. Lancs County Council say they have no funds
to repair or maintain. Our libraries are under threat too, and bus services have been scrapped.Grrrrrrr, time to open a bottle of wine.....
0 -
At least our roads are tarmac, not dirt and gravel, which are a pain to drive on and when it rains, worse still. After that photo I had to clear stones jammed between the brake pads and disc!
I have made comments to our Latvian friends and family, that their roads are now better than ours !!!!!! look no potholes.
0 -
You should try Dudley West Midlands, they have more pot hoiles than actual surfaced road....This has been the case for the last 15-20 years.SG2..
0 -
What was a surprise to me was that In Senftenberg in Germany you are not allowed to wash your car in the road. Despite the road surface being cobbles and little drainage and the footpath was just a mud path with concrete edging.Car washing had to be done
at a garage with car washing facilities, done in the road was an offense due to the fact that dirt and grease would be deposited on the road surface. SG20 -
After driving on superb roads in France, it makes you a little ashamed that foreign visitors have to put up with ourfreadful roads. My X5 is in the garage this weekend afterhitting a pothole that has disablesd the air suspension-not happy
0 -
What was a surprise to me was that In Senftenberg in Germany you are not allowed to wash your car in the road. Despite the road surface being cobbles and little drainage and the footpath was just a mud path with concrete edging.Car washing had to be done at a garage with car washing facilities, done in the road was an offense due to the fact that dirt and grease would be deposited on the road surface. SG2
As it is against the law to allow any liquid, including drinking water, to be deposited on the Highway.
I think you will find that it is also an offence in the UK to wash your car in the road.
You can be prosecuted for allowing drips of waste water to be discharged from you Caravan or MH.
But I have never heard of a case being brought under such circumstances.
0 -
What was a surprise to me was that In Senftenberg in Germany you are not allowed to wash your car in the road. Despite the road surface being cobbles and little drainage and the footpath was just a mud path with concrete edging.Car washing had to be done at a garage with car washing facilities, done in the road was an offense due to the fact that dirt and grease would be deposited on the road surface. SG2
If I remember rightly, in Germany its an offence to wash your vehicle anywhere other than a designated car washing area, the Germans are very big on anti polution and that includes car shampoo, its also an offence to use weed killer, ant killer etc. its all to do with ground contamination.
Driving from our village into town 7 miles is one long stretch of pot holes at the side of the road most of the grates have been dislodged there are pot holes everywhere they are a total disgrace. We do ride a motorcycle and bikes, its is getting beyond dangerous now its criminal.
0 -
Incidentlyand unfortunately this isn't a new problem. Until all distance HGV loads are transferred to rail it will only get worse. I also believe that raod contractors (no pun intended) are cutting corners. If we laid hard wearing surfaces road noise
would increase then we wouldn't be happy with that either.
0 -
On our local roads the vast majority of potholes are caused by services contractors digging up the road and failing to restore the road to its original condition after the services work has been completed.
My thought exactly K
Places where speed humps have been installed and the road has fell apart in the following winter or where a pothole has been "repaired" and has ended up twice as bad 12 months later.Also i dont suppose these contractors come cheap either.We have umpteen example,s of this type of problem where i live.peter.
0 -
It sometimes makes me wonder that when the Council do get round to fixing any potholes, they use contractors. I got to work driving on the M60, leading to the M56, and there was a deep pothole, everyone managed to avoided it. Anyway,it got "fixed" by it
being filled in with tarmac, not really done professionally, and I bet to myself how long it would take to be a hole again - 2 weeks. So the contractor would be resummoned. So there you have it, a contractor who got paid twice for the same job within 2 weeks.
That's how the Council goes through their funds very quickly, by hiring cowboys
0 -
One of our local unclassified roads gets used by the huge sugar beet lorries on there way to the plant at Newark, for 3 months or so every year. As a result the edges have sunk into the fields and the road is full of temporarily filled pot holes. I contacted
the council about it and they told me they had checked it and did not think it in an unsafe condition. However, a bit back when a sponsored bike ride was held along it, the organisers marked the pot holes with high visibility spray and put up numerous warning
signs. Until we realised it was for the bike ride, we got quite excited as we though it was going to be fixed.0 -
Whilst I accept there are lessons to be learned regarding the use of "cowboy" sub contractors, there are many other issues here like "if you pay peanuts you get monkeys". and I am afraid that paying peanuts is all that is left to us.
Five years of Zero percent rate rises, combined with a significant reduction in Central govt grant, means that many authorities are in dire straights.
Take ours for example, we now employ about 50% of the staff that we did 5 years ago. Many of the posts lost have been at Senior and middle management level, leaving very few experienced supervisors left. The best have all gone to Private industry.
Our planning and Street care depts are now decimated and front line service delivery is starting to creak. We no longer plant our flower beds or cut verges beyond I metre from the verge. we simply dont have the staff to do it. Our Dog wardens have been laid off, and most of our parking staff. being a semi rural area they could not issue enough tickets to even cover their costs. In their last year the dept had a net loss of £125,000. The original 5 service areas or Divisions have been reduced to 2 , so we have saved 3 lots of senior level staff but the strain on those remaining is huge. how long will they stick it?
At present we have only had to close 1 small school but the education budget, so far protected may not be safe much longer. Health is safe but savings will have to be made.
We have managed to maintaine but not increase our transport budget which pays for unfrofitable but necessary rural bus services. But not for much longer!
Libraries ! Some will have to go and others will lose hours. Dreadful choices but there is no where else that savings can be made. The mobile library, so loved by the elderly and the infirm, and the rural areas is a luxury we can no longer afford. It will go next year.
So under those circumstaces I am afraid Roads maintenance will continue to suffer!
After 15 years as a front bench Councillor I'm glad to be stepping back & will not stand again. I had hoped to make a difference, but there is simply no money to do anything any more.
TF
0 -
Good and informative post TF.
May I ask why your council cannot increase their income from a slight rise in council tax, which might help alleviate some of the issues mentioned. Also in my opinion the Mobile Library is a unique and needy service and should be retained even added to,
when static libraries are being closed. There has been a steady decline in book borrowing over .the last few years. Library buildings are expensive and can when sold, so providing much needed income for the council.Regards K
0 -
A road is not just the surface - there should be many layers below, each with a different function. When a utility digs a hole these layers are disrupted, and generally the hole is straight sided and just filled back in, although recent requirements are
that the hole is filled with new material. There is no horizontal cohesion in the layers when backfilled.One of the functions of the lower layers is to be flexible and distribute load. Random backfilled holes disrupts this, but not as much as applying too much load for the structure. Most of our non-trunk roads in UK were built before the war, and in some cases
it was the Boer War! A 20 ton three axle lorry was a really big one and a very occasional sight even in 1950s. I do not need to explain more here.The flexible lower layers spread load but ultimately the road sits on undisturbed natural material - subsoil, rock, etc. - where the water content is a major factor in its ability to support the load of the road plus traffic. Again, I think you have got
the idea.Some of you may have travelled the narrow road across Rannoch Moor and through Glencoe without a thought as to how it was constructed across many miles of bog and water pools. The technique was to heap tied bundles of brushwood in the bog until there was
sufficient strength to carry a roadway. The designers would probably never have imagined the size and weight of a modern HGV, being more concerned about a regiment of cavalry, yet this road is surviving better than most!0 -
Me too David!
To answer your question Kennine, At this years budget,- passed only last week, we did increase local rates by the maximum permitted 2% (After 4 years of 0%) But at the same time Central Govt reduced our grant by several million leaving us worse off.
The other trick that central govt have is to pass responsibility down to local authorities for various things, thus enabling them say grandly that they are increasing local accountability. That is fine in theory, but they don't give us any money to do it. That's fine for them because when it goes wrong its not their fault is it?
A classic example of that, came a few years ago, when the govt of the day de criminalised the parking laws. They passed the responsibilities to the local authorities but didn't give them the money to enforce the laws. Fine in the cities, where the new local authority wardens could have a field day issueing tickets to raise revenue. But no good to rural authorities who's wardens never raised enough money to pay for their keep. We have been forced to reduce the numbers of wardens because the dept was losing over £100,000 a year!
At the same time, now that it wasn't their responsibility any more, the Police were instructed to sack all their yellow cap badged traffic wardens, and the money saved went to create PCSO's which in my opinion have never been effective.
its all smoke & mirrors!
TF
0
