Well that'll last about two minutes.

[englisharcher]

On my way to the tip today(to get rid of the miles of excess packaging that Xmas produces), I saw a road maintenance team filling potholes.

They were filling them by shovelling tarmac straight into the holes that were still full of water, that will lift out almost immediately.

Why does the council pay for this, instead of just fixing them properly.

[The_Burg]

Think they do the same round here. Getting onto the main road is a nightmare, multiple pot holes, gravel strew all over. Has to be take at 2mph. Not good at all.

[jbi]

because they are cheap...

and retarded.

They resurfaced the road outside my house 2 years ago and it's literally coming apart... massive holes everywhere.

If they had just splashed up the cash for a decent job in the first place, it wouldn't have fell to bits in 24 months.

[J4CKO]

Might be a temporary repair but I suspect not, they do it at a junction near us and it all gets wrecked within hours of it being done.

I think a lot of it is down to budgets but also I expect a lot of the contractors do a crap job to maximise profit either because they have been nailed down on price or just because they can get away with it.

[kambites]

Well the contractors clearly have a vested interest in doing the job as badly as they can get away with.

As for why the council allow it? Incompetence, I guess - no processes in place the check the quality of repair and/or system to find out what contractor was responsible for a poor repair when it fails a year later.

[Twincharged]

There was one by me that appeared fairly suddenly, and was filled in within a few days- again, with a patch repair to the area itself, rather than the full resurfacing effort.

As to whether it will be done later, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, as:

• Lots of potholes have sprung up virtually overnight, so there are a lot more within a short space of time
• They will want to fill all of them in as quickly as possible to get them done, and avoid the cost of compensating people for damaged wheels/tyres
• They have managed to fill them in shortly after they appeared
• They will have a better chance to repair them properly when all their workforce is back in the new year (and their 2013 budget comes in, if they're on a calendar year rather than an April budget)

We'll see if it turns out to be correct! In my experience, more councils are realising that a proper repair is more cost effective in the long term than a small patching effort.

[Dodsy]

Its cheaper to keep filling then to resurface. The A43 where I live is NSL DC and one particular part has lots of really big potholes. These are several feet across and very deep, if you catch one while turning it will chuck you across the road.

So last week they closed down one lane and fixed them all with patches. Today I see that about half of them are already back to the pre-repaired state. Complete waste of time.

[Crafty_]

It's probably because the bean counters don't give them the budget to do it properly, so each hole gets an annual bodge instead, which fits the budget, problem is it fits the budget every year!

[Ozzie Osmond]

Round here the condition of the roads is shocking, mainly due to wholly inept repairs.

The council has money to instal humps and obstacles but no cash for repairs. Go figure.

[sjj84]

It's the same round here too. No doubt the contractors are completely screwed down on price. If the councils actually took some control over it they'd save a fortune. One road near us had a huge pothole, 10 yards down the road was another, they filled one and then a few days later were back again filling the other. Clearly not very cost effective.

[ImpossiblyDaft]

jbi said:

because they are cheap...

and retarded.

They resurfaced the road outside my house 2 years ago and it's literally coming apart... massive holes everywhere.

If they had just splashed up the cash for a decent job in the first place, it wouldn't have fell to bits in 24 months.

2 years isn't so bad - where I used to live, they did the thing where they stick down an extra layer of tar and roll gravel into it, it lifted straight off so at a junction you could see the old Keep Clear markings after about a week. Not to mention where a hole had been dug to access some pipes and they filled it in without actually packing in any dirt around the pipes, so there essentially a chunk of road sitting over a hole. Obviously, within a day or two it had subsided and within a week it had collapsed completely and they did it again, wasn't until the third or fourth time they actually did a proper repair.

Having said that, I don't think its always the fault of the council as such - often its them letting the utility companies cock stuff up (see the repeated cases of cars disappearing under the A320 thanks to Veolia Water).

[paulwoof]

theres one pothole on a junction 20 metres from my house. right in the middle as people like to cut the junction.
its been "fixed" about 6 or 7 times. it lasts about a week before there is chunks of tarmac sitting in the middle of the road. then its a few months before another couple of baboons come with a bucket of molten tar and stones and fill it up and drive off in 5 minutes.

i even sent an angry email to someone about it, dont know if it was the person at the council for road repairs but it helped a little

[digger the goat]

Concrete everything....
Noisy, slippery....but lasts !!

[jbi]

digger the goat said:

Concrete everything....
Noisy, slippery....but lasts !!

i'm actually all for this... concrete costs more but is far far more durable.

[Zad]

Concrete is noisy as hell, and only lasts up to the point where someone needs to dig through it. with the amount of services under the roads, that happens quite a lot.

[Condi]

Concrete is horrible stuff to drive on, it might last but its incredibly noisy, especially at motorway speeds.

The bit of the A63/M62 which was concrete is now tarmac, and as far as I know that was the only part of the m/way network which was concrete.

[4key]

Another thing to note is componsaishion init.

People now know that if they take a photo of the pothole that just killed their tyre they will get money. Throwing tarmac in the hole is probably cheaper in the short term and even if it does all start coming out, I think that they have to be a couple of inches deep before you can start claiming again.

[FlauM]

Anyone seen the pothole on the A64 towards Leeds just after the RA? It's just after where the lanes merge to one so traffic is doing 70/80mph! It's huge.

[jbi]

Zad said:

Concrete is noisy as hell, and only lasts up to the point where someone needs to dig through it. with the amount of services under the roads, that happens quite a lot.

it's not that bad IMO... the yanks and thh germans seem to love it

[bobbo89]

4key said:

Another thing to note is componsaishion init.

People now know that if they take a photo of the pothole that just killed their tyre they will get money. Throwing tarmac in the hole is probably cheaper in the short term and even if it does all start coming out, I think that they have to be a couple of inches deep before you can start claiming again.

Exactly, throwing £10 worth of tarmac into a pothole makes it safe until a more permanent repair can be made. Saves on the claims the council will get for wheel/tyre damage, as well as the people who decide to trip over stuff!