OT: Holes in the road

[jgh]

Yeah, and that's why I know it would be useless asking them.

jgh

[Weatherlawyer]

The local highways authority posted us all a nice little note saying that t he road needs resurfacing on our street and f*ck you very much but the road is too busy in the daytime for it to be closed then, so hope they don't mi nd if we suffer while they do it at night.

How about that for nice, eh?

[Tim Watts]

On Saturday 16 November 2013 20:07 Weatherlawyer wrote in uk.d-i-y:

You can't win. If they did it in the day, if not you, half your neighbours would moan and say "why can't they do it at night?".

We had nightworks on the level crossing with a closure of the crossing for 2 days solid (barriers down and big diesel loco parked on it). They have to do this stuff sometime....

[alan]

The main roads around my way are being re-surfaced during the night - a very sensible approach. Closing lanes during the day tend to cause very long traffic jams.

[Bob Eager]

Yes, our road isn't a main route but quite busy (it's one of the two roads to the station up the road).

Three nights' work - they did it in stages with the road open each day.

I was impressed - not incredibly noisy, and very very efficient. And a good job.

[Tim+]

It's great for road users, but I feel sorry for any poor bastard who has to work night shifts. It ain't natural!

Tim

[alan]

And the general population. If you want the services of the fire engine or ambulance a blue flashing light and siren doesn't get you very far . when roads become grid locked. You just have to witness the problems for the emergency services caused by some forms of road calming where the motorist has nowhere to go to give the emergency vehicles some road space.

Around my way closing a lane of one of the main roads during the day can result in a 15 mile journey taking an extra 1 to 2 hours.

[LumpHammer]

This is an excellent oportunity to study a bit of pavement engineering (in engineering terms, "pavement" is the stuff the vehicles run on.) How many layers are there? How deep does the deepest layer go? What sort of ground is the road structure resting upon? How well bound together are the various layers?

[Gazz]

If you want a really interesting view of the layers of tarmac on a road, visit 'mam tor' in the peak district, road kept getting partly destroyed by earthquakes and land slides, patched up, another earth quake, another patch, until they gave up on it,

It's amazing walking down the old road, at one point theres about a 4 foot difference in the height of the road as part of it sheared off and sunk, loads of gaps opened up, and even more areas where the side of the road has slipped down the hill a bit, in some places there must be 6 foot of tarmac layers,

[RJH]

Abbeydale Road South? They've done that there. Couldn't make it up, the old patchwork returns.

It's apparently a highly censored PFI contract, likely to cost Sheffield residents a packet.

[ARW]

It's not Abbeydale Road South. And that's a long road so which bit has been chopped up?

[RJH]

Actually, Baslow Road, just down from the Cross Sythes was the bit when one lane was closed. I've seen a couple of other coned off areas between there and Nether Edge.

[SteveW]

You can't beat 6 to 8 months of disruption as a very busy road with no alternative for miles was resurfaced bit by bit, only for a cable TV company to dig a trench snaking from side to side along 2/3 of its 3 mile length within 3 months of it being finished.

Even worse, there are grass verges along at least one mile and farmers' fields along almost the entire length of one side (where there aren't there are grassy areas at the front of industrial areas on the other).

So having missed the perfect opportunity to install their fibre ducts and then simply to save the cost of obtaining permission to use those alternatives, the surface was ruined and we suffered months more disruption too!

SteveW

[SteveW]

A good move, but the other side should be that if a utility digs up a road, they should be responsible for re-instating it to a quality that it is not felt or heard when driven or ridden over and they should be required to maintain it that way until such time as the rest of the road has begun to deteriorate and need significant repair.

SteveW

[SteveW]

Personally I'd have most roadworks done at night, with any holes plated over during the day. Ok it's noise and disruption for people living nearby, but we got through it okay when they re-laid and re-ballasted the railway passing our house over a period of nights. We just accepted that work was required and it had to be at night to keep the trains running. Why aren't main roads treated in the same way?

SteveW

[SteveW]

Generally speaking whenever they dig up roads around here they quickly reach the stone setts of the previous road. In the city centre, they usually find tram tracks too.

SteveW

[Chris J Dixon]

I believe they already are

Summary

"Statutory undertakers (mostly utilities) must reinstate the street after they have finished their works in such a way that minimises any long-term damage to the street and takes into account aesthetic considerations. The standards to which they must reinstate the street are set out in the Specification of the Reinstatement of Openings in Highways (SROH). This statutory code is published by the secretary of state under Section 71 of the New Roads and Street Works Act 1991. Changes in SROH provide a wider range of approved materials and working methods to undertakers carrying out works."

There is a link to the code of practice on that page, which I don't propose to read fully, but appears to have lots of detail.

Chris

[ARW]

Barnsley council can beat that. They resurfaced my parents street (the sort of finish with chipping in it - dunno what it is called) and the next day dumped the hot tamac for the pavement resurfacing on the new street tarmac ruining it.