Shoddy roads
 

I know the roads are always in bad shape after winter but this year seems the worst so far. Everywhere seems to be peppered with pot holes. You could see this coming though - going into the winter loads of the roads had surfaces which were cracked. A total and utter lack of pre-empting by the council here resulting in roads where drivers are devoting a worrying amount of attention to avoiding pot holes when driving.

It's not just the pot holes on the main road though, back into town and there's hardly a single manhole cover which is anything like road height. They're all sunk to about 2 inches below and uneven.

Then all the shoddy patching my utilities companies after they've dug up the road. Again, nothing like level with the road.

It's an utter disgrace. The punishment on cars is relentless and it's definitely getting worse. I know my local area isn't unique with the shoddy roads. The infrastructure in this country is embarrassing. What a sh1thole.

(It's been one of those days folks :mad: )

It's all down to money in the end.Local councils are under-funded.Dare I mention that?

I remember going to Spain in the 70's and being shocked at the state of the roads.Now they are amazing.The best I have seen.

Just goes to show what we could have done if we had the savy to play the EU game properly.

Try Italy then!

I haven't travelled about in Italy.Do you mean they are also superb?

Diabolical; but they have been bankrupt longer than us!

We don't maintain them properly; Cracks aren't sealed. Nor are the edges around repairs or patches, the UK often don't even seal between sections so even new roads will fail quicker.

Many of the roads in France and Spain have any cracks and joins sealed:

http://www.aceasphalt.com/system/fil..._Main_Page.jpg

Even in the cold/wet skiing regions and areas where the climate is worse than ours, the roads don't break up in the manner that ours do...but they are covered in loads of black zig-zags of repair tar to seal the cracks, so it must work.

Over here our council likes to use micro-asphalt resurfacing to "repair" side roads. Which basically skims the top surface slightly and melts a very thin layer of tar and fine chippings on top. 80% of the time it doesn't stick and all comes straight back off after the first hard frost/snow fall turning it into a pothole ridden gravel track.

Also when it's fresh it covers my car in tar...last time I had it up to the Windows on both sides; I wouldn't mind if the repair works, but it doesn't, so it will be redone again and plaster my car with tar all over again. :rolleyes:

Roads or elderly healthcare - which would you prefer

al going down the ****ter anyway , much more so if you happen to poor and esp now we'll be paying over the odds for stuff on our doorstep

+1 above.

Spot on Ali, council contractor comes along, dumps a barrow of Tarmac in a hole(often still with water in it) and expects it to be a satisfactory repair, without sealing it. Often leaving another pothole next to it, or a few meters down the road, that apparently doesn't warrant repairing.

And on the odd occasion they do actually carry out a proper road repair, you can bet your life within a month one of the utility companies will come along and dig a trench through the middle of it.

They are putting my council tax up yet again this year to gather extra money for our road repairs..... which will no doubt yet again be spent on something completely different!


Honestly, round us they are terribly bad and even though we are supposed to have a dedicated "Pot hole team" they get left for years. Even when you report them the report gets closed off with no action required. Had to report some outside my house 5 times before they got badly patched.


It's terrible.

If you want potholes you should go to Belgium, I nearly flipped a Fiat 500 Abarth hitting a pot hole on a Belgian motorway near Spy in the dark. Had it on 2 wheels.

That's your own fault for driving a Fiat 500. :D

Wasn't mine. I was following the owner in his STi7 back from England in it.

To be fair, the potholes here are fixed within 24 - 48 hrs of reporting them on Fixmystreet, but so few people seem to report them. The councils don't have people checking the roads for defects any more.

But that irks me is that nothing is done until they begin to disintegrate. As mentioned above, a bit of attention when problems first appear would prolong the life of the road surface. Also, addressing things like problems with drainage would help matters considerably, as would addressing underlying problems with sub-layers when potholes keep appearing after re-surfacing. Many of our roads have just been layered up on top of crappy old roads which were built for horse & cart. The sub layers don't have the structural integrity to deal with modern traffic.

In Brighton they have very similar repairs to the cracks as your picture, they are probably about 4" to 6" wide

Ten years ago, councils used to do what was called "top-dressing".

It was the spraying on of bitumen and then dressing with chippings. The chippings were for grip, the bitumen sealed cracks in the old surface so that water couldn't get in, freeze in winter and destroy the surface.

Then, they thought to save money...and stopped it, or only did it every two years, then three.

Local councillor: thick and greedy.

send your local council a letter asking for permission to open a caving club on your street like i did :thumb:

Rough em up a bit before they measure the damage ?

Someone somewhere has been using that yellow spary paint that the council uses to draw huge phallus' around the worst potholes. Strangely, the council then sees fit to fill them....

Wouldn't take long to burn off markings

You'd think not, but THAT would cause ripples, like; "Looky here. They can send someone out to remove markings but NOT to fill the potholes? Well, well!"

Seems to have worked anyway.

Looks like it's been topped at some point judging by the shallow curb height and top surface scabbing off....All well and good if the sub-surface is sound. Most likely it isn't and should have have been dug back down to the hardcore.

Round here, they'd micro-asphalt it...looks nice a few weeks after it's done and the loose debris has been swept. However it would then only last about 6months or less if there is a hard winter or was laid in damp conditions, leaving a mess of holes and aggregate all over the place.

Consider the average car is now over 1500kg and 4x4s and luxury SUVs are over 2000kg, it's little wonder a unsound badly sealed surface breaks up.

More so with electric cars , maybe tax on weight in future

thatll just eat up bauxite though

Round us, you can almost see what's doing the damage and it's HGV's.

On any route where HGV's are to be found, strips of the surface are rorn up and holed where they brake, where they set off, where they change gear and pull away again, etc etc.

Even on motorways, supposedly made for them, they are causing a pair of tramlines where the surface has sunk under the weight of their wheels.

Serves us all right for allowing heavier and heavier lorries while most of the infrastructure is still in the age of the 30 tonner.

44 tonners have more axles less strain on roads, hgvs get the blame for everything roads in Australia are perfect even with a couple hundred ton road train the fact of the matter is the roads aint maintaind then winter finishes them off.

Back in the 70s and early 80's they prudently built some of our new motorways using concrete. Much like many of the US highways. The M42 was mostly concrete and it lasted 30years without it being barely touched. Sure, it wasn't smooth or quiet (although it was fine in a well sprung/soundproofed car, like a 80's Jag that my dad would often drive along at well over 100mph). It was only resurfaced when they converted the hard shoulder to a running lane, and even then the concrete slab gives a strong stable base, unfortunately conventional tarmac will not last as long, some parts are due for resurfacing again. :(

They are constantly having to resurface the M6 across the top of Birmingham because of the high wear rate, they cocked up the drainage last time causing standing water in lane 3 so accidents in wet weather are a daily occurrence. If it was concrete and laid right, they'd need not touch it for 20+ years

The flyover on the M5 at West Bromwich is failing due to water ingress. It's at the end of its life...it needs a new, wider flyovers with longer slip roads. But no, they are going spend three years patching the old one up despite it not being capable of accommodating the current volumes of traffic :rolleyes:

And officials and media alike wonder why companies move abroad or fail to foreign competitors? If your goods and workers spend most of the time stuck in traffic, it's costing the company and wider economy. All part of crumbling aging infrastructure.

We hear lots of hot air about electric vehicles transforming the way we travel; Yet not one single promoter in the media has even considered that if conventional vehicles were not stuck idling in traffic, they'd be polluting a lot less and use a lot less fuel.

Or so they would like you to believe.

But many now have super powerful engines, 500bhp is the norm? And the torque from a huge diesel unit?

It's THAT which rips up the roads, hence the damage where it sets off, first gear change etc.

I remember my boss at the road quality testing place I worked at 20 years ago telling me that buses were actually worse than lorries because they have fewer axles & tyres, so relative to their weight they put more pressure on the roads.

Round these parts the worst culprits are tractors with their chunky tyres, small turning circle, and huge heavy trailers. They rip the roads to bits.

Anyway, in happier news some boffins have found a solution - not only to this thread but also to the recycling thread... https://www.eveningtelegraph.co.uk/f...aired-plastic/

Multiple axle HGVs can tear up the road when making tight turns. Especially ones with non-steering rear axles (Most tractor units are 6x2s, and not all have steering rear axles; more expensive).

Indeed a section of new micro-asphalt near where I work was gouged by a neighbouring company's 6x2 rigids turning in and out of their premises. Whilst their HGVs did have rear steer on the rearmost axles, they still wrecked the surface.

I'd imagine 6x4s and 8x4s could be even worse, as these often have both rear axles being driven both of which are non-steering and can be equipped with diff locks. Tri-axle trailers also scrub a fair bit too, so maybe there is also a case of drivers not lifting axles when they aren't needed.

Granted more axles does mean weight is spread out, however they also have higher weight limits, so most are going to be carrying up to 8 tonnes (or more) per axle regardless of how many axles they have.

And yes, tractors and construction/agricultural plant not disengaging axles and diff locks could tear up the road too.