Your money at work ...

[Jethro_uk]

Given that our street has potholes you could lose a small child in, and resembles more an open cast mine than a residential street, we had a little van turn up this morning. Throw a bit of tarmac down in 3 places (not the deepest or biggest potholes) roller over a bit and then f*ck off.

Apparently the potholes I reported my side of the road 3 months ago aren't in the system yet ... and you won't get anything done if you just say "the whole road needs replacing", because it isn't specific enough.

Quite aside from the danger of regular potholes (which disappear when it rains), I've reported a couple of very nasty sunken manhole covers, where the tarmac has simply eroded around the cover, which then sinks 6 inches.

A few years ago there was a fatality on the A38 Aston Expressway (Brum), when a cars front wheel went into a hole where a manhole cover had cracked and fallen in.

As an aside, I wonder how much money it would take to *properly* fix the roads. That's is dig down, lay proper foundations, and relay to take the

42 tonners that they have to ? Perhaps we need a Mussolini-style "battle for roads".

AS another aside, having seen a documentary recently that had to visit Germany, would I be correct in assuming that they run some services above ground in conduits ?

[Tim Watts]

Same problem round here.

We've all been on FixMyStreet.com which has a phone app that lets you attach a picture of the hole and an accurate GPS location.

That gets emailed through to the right authority - seems to work, eventually!

I've reported 4-5" deep holes on C class and unclassified roads that have taken 2+ weeks to get fixed despite the fact that East Sussex CC say that qualifies for a 5 day fix time!

We had a kid come off his bike last week where the holes had origianlly been reported by someone else on 22nd Jan.

[Another John]

2+ weeks?!?! Luxury!

Our lot (Northumberland) have a new wonder machine, whereby grit is being sprayed at force into potholes. They used it on our local road recently.

At first it was impossible to say how effective this method is, because the excess grit (of which there was *a lot*) masks both pothole and road.

However as the days went by it became evident that the road is now largely in *worse* condition than it was before!

A few of the potholes have been filled, but most are gouged again, and part of the reason is that *between* the potholes the excess grit built into compacted mounds, so that car wheels now slam *up* against the mound, then *down*, with even greater force, into the pothole.

As I've said before: Middle Ages - here we come. I've told various leading political figures that if they say that they will take the money earmarked for "HS2" and pledge it to fix the country's roads network instead (the figures spoken of would easily take care of this task), they will sweep up at the next election. However for some reason they don't reply to me.

J.

[Martin Brown]

The bodge it and scarper method. Popular in North Yorkshire too along with the tar and feather method used to slow vehicles down by taking great chunks out of their windscreens from flying stone ships.

Unfortunately at silage time the whole lot melts in the sunshine and is torn to shreds by the great weight of the silage wagons making turns.

Be careful what you wish for they redid a single track road near me last year and the improved road is very nice and very fast but not wide enough for two vehicles to pass without going onto the soft verges. The verges are now chewed into slick mud which is all over the nice smooth road. And they missed out the tricky very badly worn bits at each end.

To cap it all they trucked the entire road scrapings from North Yorkshire down to a hazardous waste disposal site in East Anglia because they though they might be carcinogenic with coal tar. Most locals would have preferred it if they threw them on the roadside.

Road menders will sometimes claim it belongs to the utility so they can't touch it. They finally mended the broken drain cover at the bottom of my drive after about three years prodding a month ago.

You have to watch out for really deep potholes when driving in town or country it can do serious damage to shock absorbers and be difficult to prove a claim against the local authority or highways agency.

It is one of those infrastructure jobs that involves a lot of manual work and could be beneficial to everyone. I think our single track road cost about £60k for less than a mile (exact numbers are hard to get).

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Local council have made a big point about how quickly they've fixed potholes. But don't mention that those fixes are breaking up only weeks later. A side road close to here was re-surfaced about a year ago and is now full of potholes. And the weather here has been nothing like as bad as elsewhere. No flooding, anyway. Nor severe frosts - which normally cause potholes.

[Nightjar]

On 21/02/2014 11:29, Jethro_uk wrote: ...

...

West Sussex CC have just announced they plan to spend £20 million on improving roads, which they reckon will save money in the long term, by avoiding the need to keep patching them.

Colin Bignell

[Tim Watts]

The trumpet of obviousness sounds in the distance...

[charles]

same here. Potholes filled just after Christmas are already bigger than they were and ironwork in a newly resurfaced road has all sunk, giving the impression that the mortar holding them in place has all been washed away.

[DerbyBorn]

They haven't really applied "industrialised thinking" to the process. I guess they need to prepare the hole to a specific size. profile and texture, Treat the edges in a specific manner and then lay the material in a process controlled manner.

>

[The Medway Handyman]

Well, for a start, they could use the £46 billion motorists pay in taxes every year. Currently less than £10 billion is spent on roads.

"In Britain we used to drive on the left of the road .. Now we drive on what's left of the road ... "

[Bill Wright]

This country lived beyond its means for years, and now we are having to economise. Local councils are cutting budgets. Rotherham Council will have to spend 39% less next year than they spent in 2010. I think roads are just one area of life where we have to accept that things will get worse before they get better.

Bill

[Bill Wright]

The rest goes on things like education, health, and defence. You can't have your cake and eat it.

Bill

[Brian Gaff]

Well around here we only got ours done after the gas and water mob had done their plastic pipe replacements as it was claimed it was throwing good money after bad if they were going to come along and dig it all up. I can see the logic, but as you say it does not mean that it needs to be left lethal. Is there not a duty of care at stake here?

Brian

[djc]

On 21/02/14 11:29, Jethro_uk wrote: ".

Is that about Berlin. The whole city is built on a swamp so there are purple pipes all over the place than pump water out from the foundations of building sites.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

When did you last see anyone drive on the left of the road? Everyone drives down the middle these days.

[MattyF]

Councils are simply incompetent. On a wet Friday evening I reported that a slip had occurred and a pile of mud was moving out across a major road and I wanted at least some cones to warn motorists. The council said they would have a look at it on Monday. So I rang the police, and shortly afterwards some sheepish council managers arrived in a Land Rover and put some cones there. I missed an opportunity there. I should have asked them why the hell their staff ignored my request.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Martin Brown escribió:

I can see that would take great chunks out of windscreens, yes, and much else besides :-)

[harryagain]

You can ring 101 for stuff like that. They have usually reacted quite efficiently IME.

[Andy Burns]

^^ clue

In *this* country, maybe.

[Bill Wright]

That's south London. In more civilised areas we behave better.

Bill