Dangerous Road Surfaces

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. 

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.

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

Here,s a prime example.Note the numerous repairs on the down side of the hump and this is a road that carries no hgv traffic.

v9

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.

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

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 

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!

I really to worry about the effect poor roads are having on my on car!

David 

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