RE: Roadworks aren't working: PH Blog

[All that jazz]

Ady555 said:

I think the managers of these so called "Managed Motorways" need sacking, especially on the M62 near Leeds. I was on there on Sunday at 10.30 am, speed restriction in place, 60 mph. Why, i have no idea, all lanes clear and no heavy traffic. The only congestion was the cars backing up to slow down to 60 mph from 70 mph. Get a grip. If you are going to manage these motorways, then do it right. If i had gone through the 60 mph limit at 70 mph. I would get fined and my licence endorsed. Why not impose a fine on the management company supposed to be managing these motorways for not managing the traffic flow correctly in the first place. This isn't the first time i've seen this, it is every weekend.

Edited by Ady555 on Wednesday 2nd September 13:10

Edited by Ady555 on Wednesday 2nd September 13:11

And then 8am Monday morning, red Xs above all the hard shoulder sections between J26 and J27 for absolutely no reason = gridlock in all 3 normal lanes.

Best sign is the one as you're going through the ones on the M1 in S Yorks - "You may not always see us" - No st, Sherlock, because you're never there!

"Welcome to our work zone!" - Oh do fk off. Never mind wasting time thinking up patronising signs, just pull your finger out of your arse and get the job finished already.

"My mummy works here!" - don't talk st please.

[Turbobanana]

havoc said:

Turbobanana said:

> Does the M1 need a huge concrete barrier that will rebound any luckless vehicle making contact with it back into the stream of traffic rather than absorb some of its speed like a deformable barrier does?

Now this is where it's a tough decision.

A few months ago near us an HGV went straight through the armco central reservation into oncoming traffic. To say the results weren't pretty is one hell of an understatement.

So the concrete barrier will prevent occasional incidents like this which can have horrific consequences.


But...your point is still valid...a car/van into armco will be less likely to bounce back or will do so with far less energy. The HA question is "what is the lesser evil?".

I applaud your argument, havoc.

However, given that HGVs are not meant to be in the lane nearest the concrete / Armco, ie Lane 3, then I think the Armco / wire arrangement is probably more likely to be a benefit. It also provides a crucial line of sight into the other carriageway, meaning that avoiding action can be taken if you see something coming your way.

And to add to what someone else has said, I live near the M1 barrier works and have watched it develop (admittedly at a pace that makes a glacier look like Usain Bolt) over the months including the many occasions where the barrier has been left to cure and then big sections cut out again. As they say these days, WTF?

[All that jazz]

Turbobanana said:

And to add to what someone else has said, I live near the M1 barrier works and have watched it develop (admittedly at a pace that makes a glacier look like Usain Bolt) over the months including the many occasions where the barrier has been left to cure and then big sections cut out again. As they say these days, WTF?

The concrete was contaminated but this wasn't discovered until quite some months later when someone noticed big flakes of concrete coming away and cracks appearing.

[DonkeyApple]

Just tax 25% of motorway users back into the trains. And make all off peak train travel free. Simple.

[ukaskew]

I'm guessing a level of mind numbing bureaucracy exists for all of these issues, at the very least an explanation would be nice.

We have a brand new road cutting a large section of grid-locked town off, it's brilliant, they finished it about 8 months ago, just one problem...it's not open. Apparently until 400 residents have moved into a nearby estate they can't open it. To make matters worse, all the new signs were put up when it was finished, so unsuspecting drivers head off on a 2 mile mystery tour to find a lovely new road with a giant frickin fence across it, so they then have to back track. Utter madness.

[Blanchimont]

You seriously can't make it up.

There is a contraflow going on for 10 weeks whilst work to "update a road that didn't need updating (just a bit of a retarmac in places, and not many) but seemingly ignoring the roundabout which has foot-wide (not joking) and 10inch deep potholes which expose the side of a manhole cover are left.

Then, shock horror HE come in and declare that they will do it; (after 2 years of nothing being done, despite complaints and talking to the cockhead of a mayor) closing the road for 10 days. So there will be massive queues added to the already ridiclous queues all because they can't organise a jizz in a sperm clinic.

Oh, to top it off, The roundabout is used to access a 24 hour port, meaning that the lorries and such will have to be diverted through a village. Clever huh.

[Mafffew]

Gantries with messages on simply don't work. Yesterday on the M40, between 1a and 2 they were displaying 'incident slow down'. Only for there not to have been an incident, but rather several alarmingly large planks of wood strewn over the lanes.

Now many will say that is an incident, it isn't. That is debris and should have been displayed as such along with Xs on each of the lanes it was in. Also begs the question, what the fk was it doing on a major motorway.

[anonymous-user]

Some of the points raised were covered in the last article Dan wrote. Having read a few of the comments, there’s some misunderstanding as to what work is done maintaining the existing highway, why and how. I’ll possibly get put back in my box for this, but it might explain some of it (as a chimp that’s involved in highway maintenance).

• Concrete barriers in central reserves (not reservations, reserves).
Steel barriers are a bit old hat, don’t tolerate impacts and have a short service life. In normal conditions, they’d need their beams and posts replacing after say 20 years. That’s time consuming (consider the Armco repairs at Silverstone / Le Mans and multiply the time taken by the linear length of motorway). Steel wire rope systems fell out of favour after cars started to get sliced and diced, along with motorcycle riders losing limbs and the like. Concrete barriers withstand impacts and are much lower maintenance.
The key thing here is that it reduces carriageway crossings required by the workforce, hence less roadworks. In an impact, more often than not, the barrier will have some scuff marks, but will have suffered zero structural damage so needs no repairs. There are exceptions where HGV’s find their way from Lane 1 to Lane 3, and a standard CSB wont cope, but we’ve never been in a position to provide high containment systems for every linear metre of the network (over railways being the exception). Again, as was mentioned in the last article, barrier systems are designed and tested for the laws of the land in terms of speed.

• Narrow lanes, 50mph limit, average speed cameras
In this day and age, we must maintain the highway whilst keeping road user delays to a minimum. Lots of traffic needs to be shuffled through as many lanes as possible even though the maintenance works eat into the available road width. Something has to give, and it’s the speed limit. There was a time when you could say “get it fixed, cut out as many lanes as you need”. These days, we have to keep 3 lanes open, albeit narrowed – and when you narrow them, the speed must be lowered. Speed cameras are there to try and enforce the reduced speed limit, because drivers in their metal boxes feel invincible

• TM on, no workers working
Put simply, it is too expensive and too dangerous to be putting out and bringing in traffic management on a daily basis, for a scheme of lengthy construction duration. Complaints of no workers being visible are valid, if you know for a fact that works have ceased for reasons other than, for example; concrete curing, waterproofing setting etc. In an ideal world, we’d be shift working 24/7 to reduce the construction phase, but the nature of many schemes at present (throughout the country) is refurbishment or critical substructure repairs, which by their nature require curing time before the next phase starts. Factor in the beautiful British weather, and some activities cannot be undertaken due to inclement weather (BBA certs for waterproofing, for example) can be null and void if laid in the wrong conditions. The underlying thing here is that the general public assume nothing’s happening because we’re lazy and cause disruption because we can.

• Trial signage
In an attempt to get away from the monotony that drivers experience by seeing lots of signs that all look the same, the trial was taken to try and influence driver behaviour in a positive way. It’s a well-known fact that many drivers take no notice of road works signs, due to them being very wordy. Time will tell whether changes take place though.

• General state of the network
The motorway network is very old, and jammed to capacity. When it was designed in the 1960’s, this level of congestion wasn’t anticipated and the materials used didn’t have the service life. It’s fair to say that parts of the network are on life support, just to keep them going a bit longer, because there isn’t the money to replace structures or facilitate full scale repairs (due to road user delays). See the other thread for reasons as to why widening isn't the easy solution that the uninformed believe it is.

A case study, for a scheme I was involved with, on the M5:
An overbridge which doubles as an interchange, has thaumasite attack to its support piers and foundations. The motorway has to be kept open with 3 lanes in each direction, the road above must be kept open to maintain traffic at the junction, but the foundations have to be exposed and substantial amounts of concrete removed from the piers and foundations.

Thaumasite (concrete cancer) turns concrete to mush. It occurs when ground water contains sulfates and makes its way into concrete that had soluble material incorporated into the mix i.e. gypsum in aggregate. Many structures built in the mid to late 1970’s have this trait.

The bridge deck has to be propped as the removal of concrete from the piers reduces their capacity. This means trench sheets around the foundation, scaffolds, large props etc which all take up space. A minimum 1m surround is kept around the foundation as working space for guys in the hole (foundations can be several metres below ground). All the TM and safety zones are minimums to maximise the available road width. The works take just under a year to complete due to having to stabilise revetment slopes when you remove ground surrounding the piers. None of it is achievable with overnight closures or 24/7 shift work.

The thing I’m trying to get at, is there’s a lot more going on than the road user sees - If there was a better way of doing it, it would be done that way, but at present there’s a lot of unreasonable expectations from people who expect a first class road network to appear, without any impact to their journeys. We don’t have any fairies to build and maintain the roads, just human beings, who tolerate being exposed to all manner of abuse from road users and having bottles of urine thrown at them. Fun times…

Dan, if you read this – if you get no luck with an invite to a control centre, I can ask about getting you in to the South West RCC in Avonmouth that looks after the South West, and the Smart motorway network around the M4 / M5 interchange. PM me perhaps.

[Conscript]

Mafffew said:

Gantries with messages on simply don't work. Yesterday on the M40, between 1a and 2 they were displaying 'incident slow down'. Only for there not to have been an incident, but rather several alarmingly large planks of wood strewn over the lanes.

Now many will say that is an incident, it isn't. That is debris and should have been displayed as such along with Xs on each of the lanes it was in. Also begs the question, what the fk was it doing on a major motorway.

You're being a bit picky, surely?
It might not have been an exact reflection of the problem, but as long as you slow down and pay attention does it really matter if the sign says DEBRIS or INCIDENT?
And expecting them to highlight exactly which lanes the debris is in is demanding a bit much and could be counter productive and cause people to start changing lanes which could lead to more problems. And what if a piece of debris gets knocked into another lane....surely you can't expect a controller to start switching red X's around in real time?

And I think it's fairly obvious that it must have fallen off a vehicle or something.

[mp3manager]

Slow news day?

Roadworks...always a good topic for a rant or three.

[SteveSteveson]

I'm sorry, but this was poorly thought out and unprofessional written. Perhaps, as a journalist, you could do some research, find out the background and reasoning, and maybe call the highways agency and ask for a tour? I'm sure they would be happy to oblige. Then, once all the facts have been looked at write a balanced piece criticizing problems and highlighting misunderstanding, rather than a rant using terms like "mouth breather"?

[Turbobanana]

fuelracer496 said:

Some of the points raised were covered in the last article Dan wrote. Having read a few of the comments, there’s some misunderstanding as to what work is done maintaining the existing highway, why and how. I’ll possibly get put back in my box for this, but it might explain some of it (as a chimp that’s involved in highway maintenance).

• Concrete barriers in central reserves (not reservations, reserves).
Steel barriers are a bit old hat, don’t tolerate impacts and have a short service life. In normal conditions, they’d need their beams and posts replacing after say 20 years. That’s time consuming (consider the Armco repairs at Silverstone / Le Mans and multiply the time taken by the linear length of motorway). Steel wire rope systems fell out of favour after cars started to get sliced and diced, along with motorcycle riders losing limbs and the like. Concrete barriers withstand impacts and are much lower maintenance.
The key thing here is that it reduces carriageway crossings required by the workforce, hence less roadworks. In an impact, more often than not, the barrier will have some scuff marks, but will have suffered zero structural damage so needs no repairs. There are exceptions where HGV’s find their way from Lane 1 to Lane 3, and a standard CSB wont cope, but we’ve never been in a position to provide high containment systems for every linear metre of the network (over railways being the exception). Again, as was mentioned in the last article, barrier systems are designed and tested for the laws of the land in terms of speed.

• Narrow lanes, 50mph limit, average speed cameras
In this day and age, we must maintain the highway whilst keeping road user delays to a minimum. Lots of traffic needs to be shuffled through as many lanes as possible even though the maintenance works eat into the available road width. Something has to give, and it’s the speed limit. There was a time when you could say “get it fixed, cut out as many lanes as you need”. These days, we have to keep 3 lanes open, albeit narrowed – and when you narrow them, the speed must be lowered. Speed cameras are there to try and enforce the reduced speed limit, because drivers in their metal boxes feel invincible

• TM on, no workers working
Put simply, it is too expensive and too dangerous to be putting out and bringing in traffic management on a daily basis, for a scheme of lengthy construction duration. Complaints of no workers being visible are valid, if you know for a fact that works have ceased for reasons other than, for example; concrete curing, waterproofing setting etc. In an ideal world, we’d be shift working 24/7 to reduce the construction phase, but the nature of many schemes at present (throughout the country) is refurbishment or critical substructure repairs, which by their nature require curing time before the next phase starts. Factor in the beautiful British weather, and some activities cannot be undertaken due to inclement weather (BBA certs for waterproofing, for example) can be null and void if laid in the wrong conditions. The underlying thing here is that the general public assume nothing’s happening because we’re lazy and cause disruption because we can.

• Trial signage
In an attempt to get away from the monotony that drivers experience by seeing lots of signs that all look the same, the trial was taken to try and influence driver behaviour in a positive way. It’s a well-known fact that many drivers take no notice of road works signs, due to them being very wordy. Time will tell whether changes take place though.

• General state of the network
The motorway network is very old, and jammed to capacity. When it was designed in the 1960’s, this level of congestion wasn’t anticipated and the materials used didn’t have the service life. It’s fair to say that parts of the network are on life support, just to keep them going a bit longer, because there isn’t the money to replace structures or facilitate full scale repairs (due to road user delays). See the other thread for reasons as to why widening isn't the easy solution that the uninformed believe it is.

A case study, for a scheme I was involved with, on the M5:
An overbridge which doubles as an interchange, has thaumasite attack to its support piers and foundations. The motorway has to be kept open with 3 lanes in each direction, the road above must be kept open to maintain traffic at the junction, but the foundations have to be exposed and substantial amounts of concrete removed from the piers and foundations.

Thaumasite (concrete cancer) turns concrete to mush. It occurs when ground water contains sulfates and makes its way into concrete that had soluble material incorporated into the mix i.e. gypsum in aggregate. Many structures built in the mid to late 1970’s have this trait.

The bridge deck has to be propped as the removal of concrete from the piers reduces their capacity. This means trench sheets around the foundation, scaffolds, large props etc which all take up space. A minimum 1m surround is kept around the foundation as working space for guys in the hole (foundations can be several metres below ground). All the TM and safety zones are minimums to maximise the available road width. The works take just under a year to complete due to having to stabilise revetment slopes when you remove ground surrounding the piers. None of it is achievable with overnight closures or 24/7 shift work.

The thing I’m trying to get at, is there’s a lot more going on than the road user sees - If there was a better way of doing it, it would be done that way, but at present there’s a lot of unreasonable expectations from people who expect a first class road network to appear, without any impact to their journeys. We don’t have any fairies to build and maintain the roads, just human beings, who tolerate being exposed to all manner of abuse from road users and having bottles of urine thrown at them. Fun times…

Dan, if you read this – if you get no luck with an invite to a control centre, I can ask about getting you in to the South West RCC in Avonmouth that looks after the South West, and the Smart motorway network around the M4 / M5 interchange. PM me perhaps.

Thank you fuelracer496 for your well reasoned, eloquent response. I think it probably addresses most issues raised, except perhaps that of the mileage under speed restriction vs that being worked on.

I work in the Rail industry and we have to plan our worksites extremely carefully so as to limit the blockages as much as possible (much harder to divert a train ). Compare France, where I was last week: worksite protected by a short warning period then traffic released from restriction a few metres beyond where the ACTUAL work was being carried out. And that was on the AutoRoute.

[AdamAJP]

Thank you for braving the forum to help answer some of the concerns.

I have been wondering why our roads were so much worse than in France (having spent 2 weeks and over 2,500 miles on them recently). So the answer is their age and presumably lack of investment in what would be a huge undertaking based upon the level of deterioration. All smacks of the same short-term thinking our successive governments have applied to the Pension "hot potato" - ignore and it will go away. I now dream of driving on French roads where I only saw one small section of roadworks being busily worked upon in the two weeks. Other than than pure, smooth, non-undulating fast roads (the Peage at least). Then I return to the UK and the M20 is like some sort of noise torture and the M3 was almost entirely at 50mph with one small group in tens of miles. I felt it was embarrassing that we have allowed our roads to become like this.

I know we have more traffic per mile (it at least seems so) vs the French but as we all pay road tax surely this means more money available for improvements. The danger of course being that for the level of improvements needed we may all end up sat in roadworks for decades!

fuelracer496 said:

Some of the points raised were covered in the last article Dan wrote. Having read a few of the comments, there’s some misunderstanding as to what work is done maintaining the existing highway, why and how. I’ll possibly get put back in my box for this, but it might explain some of it (as a chimp that’s involved in highway maintenance).

• Concrete barriers in central reserves (not reservations, reserves).
Steel barriers are a bit old hat, don’t tolerate impacts and have a short service life. In normal conditions, they’d need their beams and posts replacing after say 20 years. That’s time consuming (consider the Armco repairs at Silverstone / Le Mans and multiply the time taken by the linear length of motorway). Steel wire rope systems fell out of favour after cars started to get sliced and diced, along with motorcycle riders losing limbs and the like. Concrete barriers withstand impacts and are much lower maintenance.
The key thing here is that it reduces carriageway crossings required by the workforce, hence less roadworks. In an impact, more often than not, the barrier will have some scuff marks, but will have suffered zero structural damage so needs no repairs. There are exceptions where HGV’s find their way from Lane 1 to Lane 3, and a standard CSB wont cope, but we’ve never been in a position to provide high containment systems for every linear metre of the network (over railways being the exception). Again, as was mentioned in the last article, barrier systems are designed and tested for the laws of the land in terms of speed.

• Narrow lanes, 50mph limit, average speed cameras
In this day and age, we must maintain the highway whilst keeping road user delays to a minimum. Lots of traffic needs to be shuffled through as many lanes as possible even though the maintenance works eat into the available road width. Something has to give, and it’s the speed limit. There was a time when you could say “get it fixed, cut out as many lanes as you need”. These days, we have to keep 3 lanes open, albeit narrowed – and when you narrow them, the speed must be lowered. Speed cameras are there to try and enforce the reduced speed limit, because drivers in their metal boxes feel invincible

• TM on, no workers working
Put simply, it is too expensive and too dangerous to be putting out and bringing in traffic management on a daily basis, for a scheme of lengthy construction duration. Complaints of no workers being visible are valid, if you know for a fact that works have ceased for reasons other than, for example; concrete curing, waterproofing setting etc. In an ideal world, we’d be shift working 24/7 to reduce the construction phase, but the nature of many schemes at present (throughout the country) is refurbishment or critical substructure repairs, which by their nature require curing time before the next phase starts. Factor in the beautiful British weather, and some activities cannot be undertaken due to inclement weather (BBA certs for waterproofing, for example) can be null and void if laid in the wrong conditions. The underlying thing here is that the general public assume nothing’s happening because we’re lazy and cause disruption because we can.

• Trial signage
In an attempt to get away from the monotony that drivers experience by seeing lots of signs that all look the same, the trial was taken to try and influence driver behaviour in a positive way. It’s a well-known fact that many drivers take no notice of road works signs, due to them being very wordy. Time will tell whether changes take place though.

• General state of the network
The motorway network is very old, and jammed to capacity. When it was designed in the 1960’s, this level of congestion wasn’t anticipated and the materials used didn’t have the service life. It’s fair to say that parts of the network are on life support, just to keep them going a bit longer, because there isn’t the money to replace structures or facilitate full scale repairs (due to road user delays). See the other thread for reasons as to why widening isn't the easy solution that the uninformed believe it is.

A case study, for a scheme I was involved with, on the M5:
An overbridge which doubles as an interchange, has thaumasite attack to its support piers and foundations. The motorway has to be kept open with 3 lanes in each direction, the road above must be kept open to maintain traffic at the junction, but the foundations have to be exposed and substantial amounts of concrete removed from the piers and foundations.

Thaumasite (concrete cancer) turns concrete to mush. It occurs when ground water contains sulfates and makes its way into concrete that had soluble material incorporated into the mix i.e. gypsum in aggregate. Many structures built in the mid to late 1970’s have this trait.

The bridge deck has to be propped as the removal of concrete from the piers reduces their capacity. This means trench sheets around the foundation, scaffolds, large props etc which all take up space. A minimum 1m surround is kept around the foundation as working space for guys in the hole (foundations can be several metres below ground). All the TM and safety zones are minimums to maximise the available road width. The works take just under a year to complete due to having to stabilise revetment slopes when you remove ground surrounding the piers. None of it is achievable with overnight closures or 24/7 shift work.

The thing I’m trying to get at, is there’s a lot more going on than the road user sees - If there was a better way of doing it, it would be done that way, but at present there’s a lot of unreasonable expectations from people who expect a first class road network to appear, without any impact to their journeys. We don’t have any fairies to build and maintain the roads, just human beings, who tolerate being exposed to all manner of abuse from road users and having bottles of urine thrown at them. Fun times…

Dan, if you read this – if you get no luck with an invite to a control centre, I can ask about getting you in to the South West RCC in Avonmouth that looks after the South West, and the Smart motorway network around the M4 / M5 interchange. PM me perhaps.

[Dan Trent]

fuelracer496 said:

Dan, if you read this – if you get no luck with an invite to a control centre, I can ask about getting you in to the South West RCC in Avonmouth that looks after the South West, and the Smart motorway network around the M4 / M5 interchange. PM me perhaps.

Thanks for the very detailed and interesting post; I did have a 'working' invitation to a centre lined up but it then got elevated to national level and they said 'not until after the election' so probably time to start exploring that again.

Appreciate the time taken to put up that response though. Will be in touch.

And to those saying 'do your research' etc... this and previous stories on the topic ARE based on reading lots of very heavyweight Highways England PDFs (linked from the other pieces) and are - yes - intended as provocative opinion pieces written from the perspective of a 'customer'. As and when we get this visit to a control centre and chance to speak with those formulating and implementing the policies we'll look at it more objectively. For now just the odd blog/rant!

Cheers,

Dan

[saaby93]

Swanny87 said:

havoc said:

Now this is where it's a tough decision.

A few months ago near us an HGV went straight through the armco central reservation into oncoming traffic. To say the results weren't pretty is one hell of an understatement.

So the concrete barrier will prevent occasional incidents like this which can have horrific consequences.


But...your point is still valid...a car/van into armco will be less likely to bounce back or will do so with far less energy. The HA question is "what is the lesser evil?".

They won't though. Remember that horrific crash on the M25 at the start of this year where an HGV went through the concrete barrier?

I do wonder if the concrete barrier is a marketing game. Is it actually as strong or as useful as it looks, or is the old armco better at deflection?

[Ruffy94]

What i can't stand is the stupid signs on the M1 saying 'welcome to our workplace'/'our dad works here'/'lets all get home safely'/'nobody likes a tailgater' etc.

Already annoyed at having to do 40mph for miles and miles, putting a jokey sign up only increases my rage...

[canucklehead]

if you want to see what a world WITHOUT adequate road maintenance looks like then come to North America.

frost heaves, potholes, ineptly executed patches over the worst abhorrences, worn out road surfaces, we get the whole lot - on freeways as well as the other roads.

makes me yearn for the generally excellent motorways, autoroutes, autobahns and autostrada of Europe, roadworks and all.

[TartanPaint]

fuelracer496 said:

Some good stuff

Nice, thanks for that.

Don't agree with this though:

fuelracer496 said:

If there was a better way of doing it, it would be done that way

In my opinion, it's not ever done the BEST way. It's done the CHEAPEST way. If there was an even cheaper way to do it, it would be done that way.

That's because the people picking up the tab for the repair works are not the same people affected by the disruption it causes. I don't agree that those carrying out the work are incentivised proportionally to the total economic cost to the country. If those with shovels in their hands (not literally) were the same people who had to bear the cost of the disruption directly, then a 24/7 effort with endless manpower to absolutely minimise the project duration is exactly how these things would be done.

[All that jazz]

Ruffy94 said:

What i can't stand is the stupid signs on the M1 saying 'welcome to our workplace'/'our dad works here'/'lets all get home safely'/'nobody likes a tailgater' etc.

Already annoyed at having to do 40mph for miles and miles, putting a jokey sign up only increases my rage...

It also annoys me beyond reason that they appear to have hands from a chimpanzee

[anonymous-user]

saaby93 said:

do wonder if the concrete barrier is a marketing game. Is it actually as strong or as useful as it looks, or is the old armco better at deflection?

Well you don't have to close 2 lanes of the motorway now every night once a car has scuffed the conc barriers rather than bent a few z posts and a bit of armco.

Next time you drive along a motorway look at how many single, or more short pieces of steel armco are a different shade, slightly lighter than the surrounding each repaired one of them was a closure now no longer necessary where concrete has replaced long sections