Carriageway retexturing?

[R D S]

The road outside work is rutted and potholed. There's trucks coming past all day and night, local residents can't sleep, you have to wonder how much shaking a building can take before it falls down.

So a letter came from the council that a stretch was going to be resurfaced, i'm noting from my office window that this is happening, yet nothing has been dug up.

These people are here,

Is there any danger this will be more than a temporary fix?

I'm guessing not. An educated guess.

[R D S]

"Whereas hot applied thermoplastics has a typical shelf life of 18 months, JMS provide you with the solution and guarantee to more than triple the lifespan"

7.5 years. LOL.

[Brian Reay]

There was (is?) a system we (the UK) used to build roads which was supposedly cheaper. As I recall, they put in the 'base layers' and then a 'top coat' (or coats). The idea was, provided the top coats were renewed every x years (x was quite small, I think 5-10 at most) the road would last for ever.

Needless to say, the top coats weren't replaced in many cases, so the base layers got damaged, and the whole idea flopped. Whether it would have worked if applied correctly is open to debate.

Certainly, I can think of (main) roads that seemed never to need repair but weren't made of tarmac - but they were darn noisy to drive on, a combination of the joints between the concrete (or concrete like) slabs and the ridges on the slabs.

[Steve Walker]

Quieter versions of concrete roads were developed, but never used. IIRC the biggest difference was instead of the ridges, they laid the concrete smooth and then when almost solid, they cracked the surface with an impact machine. That created random grooves at all angles, that didn't cause the tyres to "sing." By then though everyone was moving on to tarmac, so we get roads that need resurfacing on a regular basis (more regular than they actually get) and need a lot of maintenance and repair inbetween.

SteveW

[Bill]

In message <qc5s2e$j3m$ [e-mail], R D S [e-mail] writes

On a main road near us, a company is resurfacing large squares of tarmac surface layer with blacker tarmac-like material.

They have been holding us up for days now, with traffic lights around each area they resurface. They must have done about 20 to 30 patches so far.

It doesn't look as if it will last, particularly at the interface between old and new surface, and the new patches are noticeably bumpier than the unrepaired areas.

[R D S]

To be fair this went down quickly, though it does appear that they have simply warmed the old surface up and pressed stones into it. Perhaps a very thin layer of something new as it's a slightly different colour but they didn't go all the way to the edge and there's no perceptible rise.

The building is still rattling as the trucks go past so a fail there.

[Brian Gaff]

unless you drive on it or get frosts. Brian

[Brian Gaff]

Yes our front road was concrete when we came here in the 1950s and its just been tarred ever since. The joints are showing through again only after a year or so. Then there are the gas, Electricity, virgin media bt and sundry other assorted holes through the concrete itself of course filled with something or other, the sign used to say, beware concrete curing, well I did not know it was ill. Brian

[Brian Gaff]

I noticed a message on local radio the other day, bus stops in x y and z will be out of commission for three days due to application of non slip coating to the carriageway. What? I'd hope that all roads were non slip myself. Then there are the speed bumps which are so polished cars cannot get over them. Brian

[ARW]

Have you done the SW section of the M25 recently?

[ARW]

Well I phoned the council up last week to complain about a pothole on my street.

And they fixed like this. Done on purpose to win a bet I made down at the pub with one of the lads that does the work.

Barmaid said it will last 3 minutes.

[Steve Walker]

I can't work out why we have such a problem. Over 30 years of holidaying in the North of France (Brittany) I have driven along one particular road that has dozens of large rectangular patches to the surface. They are so smoothly joined that you don't feel anything as you go over them and in 30 years they haven't deteriorated.

I have also driven on a brand-new road there and everyone in the car commented on how smooth it was, with no undulations at all.

Why can't we manage even a half-decent road surface or lasting repairs here?

SteveW

[Steve Walker]

No, not been down South (other than by train) for a good few years now. I changed jobs and stopped travelling all over the country.

SteveW

[Marland]

Do other countries regard roads in the same way as here in that they are not just for traffic on their surface but the function of being a convenient right of way for the various services as well? It seems that even if the highway is resurfaced to a good standard it isn?t long before one of the undertakings that are allowed to dig holes do so and the patch repairs have ruined the smoothness for a decade or more. It wasn?t too critical in towns and cities where speeds were low but many a good open fast road in the country has been ruined by openreach removing cables from pole runs and placing them in ducts.

Prime example here where tree roots must have frustrated laying the conduit a quick diversion and buggering the surface was done rather than dig deeper on the field side.

A little further on a change from one side to the other not even done the shortest route , why couldn?t they move it underneath rather than wreck the road.

Cheap quick job for them , years of imperfect road for the traffic that uses it.

GH

[Marland]

Bloody spill chuck, should be mole underneath.

GH

[Richard]

At least he got to make a statement. I wonder if there are there any potholes near parliament that need fixing.

[Andy Burns]

We do seem to manage it on motorways now, an overnight closure seems to be able to do a 'perfect' strip of wearing coat about 1/4 mile long, so over the course of a week several lanes and strips get done in an area.

Presumably that's organised by the highways agency, not done by tinpot local councils who are one step up from "psst! want your drive doing mate"

[Davidm]

But they still seem to restrict 5 miles of motorway in order to "work" on 1/4 mile (that is when anyone is doing any work at all)!

[Lee Nowell]

Wonder if this technique would work on my tarmac drive and how cost effective it is

[Terry Casey]

And the attitude to speed humps in this country is ridiculous. No way can you drive at anything like the speed limit over these obstructions, so what's the point?

Tfl say that the maximum gradient of a speed hunp or table son a bus route should be 16:1.

This is a bus route that I used to use daily - what's the rate of attack here?

The leading edge rises to pavement hieight at nigh on 1:1!

I've driven a lot abroad, particularly in Belgium and I've noticed that if the speed limit is, say, 70km/h (~42mph), you can drive over a speed bump at 70 with no problems.

I only ever had a problem once when one gave me a bit of a jolt, but that was my fault as I discovered the followeing day that I'd missed the town boundary marker obscured by trees and it was actually a 50km/h limit. I dropped my speed to 50km/h (~30mph) and no problem.

Proof posiutive to me that, correctly implemented, they can and do warn speeding drivers without impeding the normal traffic flow.