It seems that in wet weather many suffer due to a vehicle going off the tarmac and making a rutt in the adjacent earth. This then leads to the tarmac crumbling away into the rutt and so it continues.
In my mind I can envisage a machine that could excavate a narrow trench at the edge of the tarmac that could be followed up with some steel stakes and reinforcement and then a readymix lorry.
Has anyone seen any solutions that work that are not as major as curbs?
There's a little "back lane" round here that hasn't suffered from that problem in the 30 years I've lived here, but it has done this winter, the council have been and filled in the tracks, but they've cut up again in other stretches, I was wondering if it's due to satnavs directing yodel drivers along it?
You want to curb the rutt without a kerb?
Recently, several roads in my area have had the edges excavated - just a foot or two - and refilled with coarse stone. Clearly not intended to widen the road, as laying readymix would. Just avoid mud adjcent to the blacktop.
Seems to work.
It is afaict a combination of erosion of the earth verge or bank by increased traffic, oversized tractors and lorries squeezing past each other and water they running in the gully at the edge of the tarmac and carrying away all the loose material. It's a big problem round here. If you drop your wheels into the rut you can loose control and you can shred your tyres.
TW
Who would build a road without proper edges. Seems to me the fault is built in and its only stupid people who build such roads in the first place. Brian
It's a rut, please!
Many roads were built to standards appropriate to small, horsedrawn wagons - at the largest - and single-track at that. They now have to cope with gigantic agricultural machinery, articulated and rigid lorries, SUVs the size of houses, and others which were not even imagined at the time. Even where they are slightly wider, they might have to cope with traffic in both directions - each going slightly further to the left than they really should.
The folly could be in allowing these vehicles on roads that were not built to take them and not upgraded. Or in not upgrading them.
True - a typo. Finger stutterrrrrrrr.
That description would include almost all rural roads. Round here they have taken to adding kerbs to some bends which has the interesting effect of creating a flooded area for aquaplaning whenever it rains. There is no mains drainage on a lot of them either.
Even when they redo the roads as they did round here for those that were on the Tour de Yorkshire route they still replaced like with like and if anything made the soft verges even softer so that they rutted deeper.
Part of the problem is routing serious traffic along tiny rural roads in the event of failure of one of the major trunk roads.
polygonum_on_google snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote:
We have a situation near here where there is facility that makes compost or soil conditioning material from green waste located on what was once a dairy farm. Not a bad business as it gives a few jobs and is agricultural related, the trouble is they have a contract with the adjoining county to take their green waste from a good part of it which means daily there multiple movements of refuse vehicles to and fro on what was a narrow lane whose maintenance falls to the county in which it is located a couple of miles from the border . Despite representations from them to the other for at least their drivers to take care the county whose lorries are doing the damage has basically said tough . If it was really narrow and single track it might be better as at least the buggers would have to pass with one stopped , as it is they pass by one or the other putting nearside wheels right on or beyond the edge of the tarmac breaking it off at the edge which is has now narrowed the usable width by up to 3ft or more in places but they still pass and now there are large ruts on each side of the broken tarmac. Drains and ditches have been blocked by displaced mud etc and the ruts in the soft ground are now getting on for 2ft deep, one of the drivers of a cart I was following almost got their come upance the other day when he pulled into a rut they would have had a hand in making without slowing. They went over so far I thought it was going to topple and must have been a brown trouser moment.In a way it was a pity it didn?t , I wouldn?t want to see the driver hurt but it might get some attention to the issue.
GH
The average "White Van" is not the size of a bus.
Not even that. This is millenial delusiuon.
may roads are droving trcaks. Eher animals were fdrtiven by peole walkimg. Over time they wore away te road tuill it was below teh land ;level. Peole got feed up with winter mud so carried along stones to throw in the deeper holes. Over time this became formalised, and roads made of broken stone (McAdam) became suitable for horse and carts, and the Motor Car. But Motor Cars made dust and broke te riad up so they glued it together with tar, and a dressing of gravel, and that was TarMcAdam., Or tarmac.
No one designed these roads. They evolved.
Yhjey saiu that about horses anbd carts back in Roman times
If enough people get upset enough and prepared to pay they will get upgraded.
>
The problem has arisen by satnavs sending heavy vehicles down roads they would never find in the past.
It's even worse if there's a gradient, rainwater washes the ruts out.
Highway engineers neeed a big sign in their offices: "Water does not flow uphill"
That's one reason why kerbs are usually only added on country roads to /mitigate/ flooding or to support safety barriers. It's not cheap. And it's not going to stop HGVs, tractors etc overrunning the kerb onto verges.
I reckon it is done merely to spend the available budget close to the annual spending cutoff date that should have been used for tarring and feathering (or what they laughingly call "road maintenance").
None of the kerbs put on the bends near me make a blind bit of difference. The big stuff just smashes them up and they serve only to allow water to pool on the road against them when before it was free draining onto the grass verge.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.