What is going to happen to our roads?

[RedSwede]

This is a serious question - not just a moan thread.

Our roads are terrible - we know this. They are an order of magnitude worse than most of Europe that I have experienced, even a decent percentage of former Eastern-block countries are far better.

Since the start of this year, the weather has taken a particular toll, and the patches-on-patches are completely failing. Trunk roads will no doubt get a semi-passable repair, but there doesn't seem to be anything planned for the thousands of miles of important but more minor roads. Certainly not the full scale resurface that is needed.

Generally, 10-15 years ago most roads were OK now they're not. What does everyone expect the situation to be in 10-15 years time? At the same rate of deterioration, I think a lot of routes may be impassible. Can that be left to happen?

[Guvernator]

The A road that runs near our house has been emergency repaired at least 5 or 6 times in the last two years. They keep repairing one bit of it and either the bodged repair fails or another bit breaks a bit further down the road. Each time they've had to put temporary lights in causing massive traffic jams in each direction.

It's obvious this method of repair isn't working but they persist with it as there doesn't seem to be any overall plan to do it properly and this is just one local example. We are in debt as a nation though and roads seem to be very low down the pecking order for a slice of the nations tax revenue.

[kambites]

RedSwede said:

Our roads are terrible - we know this.

Speak for yourself. I've driven in about half of countries in the EU and a good few outside it and I've encountered very few places with better roads than Hampshire and an awful lot which are much, much worse.

[budgie smuggler]

TVR Moneypit said:

The roads around here are so bad that even in my wifes Grand Cherokee or my utter snotter VW Polo, (on 70 series winter tyres), navigating them is hard work.

In a nutshell, the roads around here are fked, proper fked, and I can't see them getting fixed any time soon, (3 years).

Same here, one particular junction in Basildon I use (between B&Q and Sporting Village) is now more pothole than road!

[RedSwede]

kambites said:

Speak for yourself. I've driven in about half of countries in the EU and a good few outside it and I've encountered very few places with better roads than Hampshire and an awful lot which are much, much worse.

Well maybe Hampshire is the exception, as I haven't driven there much recently. Or maybe you've driven the other half of European countries that I have, or maybe I needed to be more explicit and say "our road surface is terrible". But really, my experience is that other countries road surfaces are in general not breaking up and completely failing in the way much of the UK is. I'm not saying they're perfect, but they are not crumbling away without proper repairs.

One way or another, we need more money hitting the budgets for road repairs (and other civic infrastructure and institutions too) IMO.

[culpz]

What's going to happen is that they will carry on as they are. Huge holes will appear over time and they will repair them. Some quickly, some not so quickly.

I genuinely don't believe that they see it as a huge problem right now as you do. I might not agree with it but it is what it is, i suppose.

[Krikkit]

The root of the problem is the lack of money given to councils - our council had to save hundreds of millions of pounds from its budgets, and as such the quality and frequency of repairs has noticeably reduced.

Part of it (imho) is the type of repair done - a lot of them are blasted with very coarse tarmac and hardly tamped down. As soon as the road freezes in winter it just fractures and disintegrates. The potholes that were fixed last year are now back with a vengeance.

[tannhauser]

RedSwede said:

Generally, 10-15 years ago most roads were OK now they're not. What does everyone expect the situation to be in 10-15 years time? At the same rate of deterioration, I think a lot of routes may be impassible. Can that be left to happen?

Speaking as someone who works within the industry, yes that can indeed happen in the most extreme cases - lesser used minor roads, or cut-throughs can be left to deteriorate and/or be closed.

RedSwede said:

One way or another, we need more money hitting the budgets for road repairs (and other civic infrastructure and institutions too) IMO.

Not going to happen - more likely to go the other way. There is no money left - we are pretty fked as a nation.

[Wooda80]

This is what's going on near me:
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/great...

It does seem that there has been a massive deterioration in the last 3 years or so. Hypothesis: maybe they stopped spending money on patching and put that money towards doing the job properly once they have got enough saved up? Let's hope so.

[Chris944]

Scenario 1: Labour will win the next election, announce massive public spending rise and some of that cash will go to local authorities and some of it will be spent on roads.

Scenario 2: Conservatives will announce end of austerity before next election. Transport Minister will become motorists' friend and announce piles of pothole-fix cash.

[sparkythecat]

Shouldn't this thread be on the PH Roads forum?

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/forum.asp?h=0&...

[culpz]

Krikkit said:

The root of the problem is the lack of money given to councils - our council had to save hundreds of millions of pounds from its budgets, and as such the quality and frequency of repairs has noticeably reduced.

I suppose the standard reply to that is the usual "what do i pay road tax for then?". There has to be some truth there though, as there are alot of cars on the roads these days, so there's an argument there to say that they should have more funds than ever to sort these problems out.

Krikkit said:

Part of it (imho) is the type of repair done - a lot of them are blasted with very coarse tarmac and hardly tamped down. As soon as the road freezes in winter it just fractures and disintegrates. The potholes that were fixed last year are now back with a vengeance.

There's also the issue of how/when these repairs take place. When performing such repairs, do they need to close all or part of the road off to do this? Congestion is more of widespread issue, i'd say, so the repercussions of constantly fixing road damage add another element in.

[captain_cynic]

kambites said:

Speak for yourself. I've driven in about half of countries in the EU and a good few outside it and I've encountered very few places with better roads than Hampshire and an awful lot which are much, much worse.

It depends on where you live. Hampshire, Surrey, Berkshire are fairly well to do counties so there's a lot of money for road maintenance. In less well off counties it may have slipped down the list of priorities.

I do think the UK motorway system is amongst the best in the world, most A roads are in good condition too. The story starts to change with B and lesser roads.

The other issue is that some roads cant be shut down for resurfacing without causing traffic chaos. Out of many large towns the routes out are already at capacity and there's no room to put in more.

[tannhauser]

sparkythecat said:

Shouldn't this thread be on the PH Roads forum?

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/forum.asp?h=0&...

What, where no one will read it?

[Ares]

Roads are a joke. As per my other thread, I've got a £550 tyre repair bill from a pothole*:



(*which will be forwarded to the council....as I reported the pothole 7days earlier)

But chatting to my dad over the weekend, got pulled by the Police under the suspicion of being over the DD limit as he was swerving all over the road. He was avoiding potholes. The driving style we are being forced to adopt cannot be deemed safe.

[rainmakerraw]

Our local roads (Liverpool) are in an atrocious state. Literally to the point that many local roads are now no-go areas for cars, and people are having to divert their usual routes. The mayor has had to issue a public apology for the state of the local network, and the city has begun selling off municipal assets (like the historical buildings at the Liver dock) to help patch (not re-surface) some of the roads. They say there is currently a >£400m backlog of repairs required, and the mayor currently believes the network to be an accident risk in itself, such is the poor state of it.

Local article here.

[Ares]

rainmakerraw said:

Our local roads (Liverpool) are in an atrocious state. Literally to the point that many local roads are now no-go areas for cars, and people are having to divert their usual routes. The mayor has had to issue a public apology for the state of the local network, and the city has begun selling off municipal assets (like the historical buildings at the Liver dock) to help patch (not re-surface) some of the roads. They say there is currently a >£400m backlog of repairs required, and the mayor currently believes the network to be an accident risk in itself, such is the poor state of it.

Local article here.

Problem is, and Joe is one of the worst for this, they are using roads as a political pawn to make a statement about funding cuts.

[V8mate]

I think we have two problems:

- County Councils simply don't have the cash to repair our local roads properly, so they continue to make do and mend. The only 'improvement' they can demonstrate being the speed at which they respond to new damage.

- Highways England simply can't build roads. Either they've forgotten how or can't be arsed, but major trunk route and motorway replacements are starting to crumble within months of opening and are often in a serious state within a couple of years.

Watching ze Germanz, as they are currently replacing the old motorway network is truly a civil engineering sight to behold. They're building proper new roads capable of handling another 50+ years of traffic.

[magpie215]

My local authority have closed and abandoned a local road letting nature take it back.

[Ares]

V8mate said:

I think we have two problems:

- County Councils simply don't have the cash to repair our local roads properly, so they continue to make do and mend. The only 'improvement' they can demonstrate being the speed at which they respond to new damage.

- Highways England simply can't build roads. Either they've forgotten how or can't be arsed, but major trunk route and motorway replacements are starting to crumble within months of opening and are often in a serious state within a couple of years.

Watching ze Germanz, as they are currently replacing the old motorway network is truly a civil engineering sight to behold. They're building proper new roads capable of handling another 50+ years of traffic.

....there is also the issue that it takes 2 yrs (plus a year of overruns) to build a short stretch of dual carriageway here when in most countries, the same road take a fraction of the time.

In China, they can build a railways station in a day!!