What is going to happen to our roads?

[RedSwede]

Limpet said:

A ring fenced 1p a litre addition to fuel duty would fill a £400m black hole in just over a year, based on a typical 36 billion retail litres of fuel sold in a year, as well as provide a healthy fund for ongoing maintenance.

If it was clear that the money would go to the road network and not get lost/wasted on other stuff, I'd happily support it. Something needs to be done.

I'd happily support it too. But although it would help, I thought the "black hole" was nearer £5-10+ Bn?

On another note, just because you saw the pothole once before, does not mean it is always avoidable. Sometimes it seems like every thread gets derailed with victim blaming... There are a hundred reasons why someone can't avoid a pothole (and 99 of them do not imply that it is a miracle they haven't mown down a child). BUT, at 3mm tread left, the tyre is 80% of the way to being illegal (assuming a standard 8mm start depth)

Why not accept bad luck, replace the tyre out of your own pocket (the bill is £550, but the the pothole only ruined £55 of tyre), and save the council the money of fighting it and possibly/probably paying for the tyre? I have taken a pothole damaged tyre on the chin, and if others did the same, there'd be a whole lot extra cash in the bank to actually repair the road

[TurboHatchback]

It's not like anyone forces you to have massive rims with expensive rubber band tyres, if you know that the roads aren't perfect, pick such a unsuitable setup and then don't drive to the conditions why should Billy-Bob taxpayer on minimum wage fund shiny new wheels and tyres for you? As far as I'm concerned the roads don't come with a guarantee of being perfectly flat, smooth and free from obstructions, the onus is on the driver to avoid driving into stationary obstacles and damaging his vehicle. My partner managed to destroy four tyres and bend three rims (in different incidents) in her Panda 100hp by being a muppet, never did it occur to either of us that it was someone elses fault and that she should claim for compensayshun.

[Fastpedeller]

RedSwede said:

Limpet said:

A ring fenced 1p a litre addition to fuel duty would fill a £400m black hole in just over a year, based on a typical 36 billion retail litres of fuel sold in a year, as well as provide a healthy fund for ongoing maintenance.

If it was clear that the money would go to the road network and not get lost/wasted on other stuff, I'd happily support it. Something needs to be done.

I'd happily support it too. But although it would help, I thought the "black hole" was nearer £5-10+ Bn?

On another note, just because you saw the pothole once before, does not mean it is always avoidable. Sometimes it seems like every thread gets derailed with victim blaming... There are a hundred reasons why someone can't avoid a pothole (and 99 of them do not imply that it is a miracle they haven't mown down a child). BUT, at 3mm tread left, the tyre is 80% of the way to being illegal (assuming a standard 8mm start depth)

Why not accept bad luck, replace the tyre out of your own pocket (the bill is £550, but the the pothole only ruined £55 of tyre), and save the council the money of fighting it and possibly/probably paying for the tyre? I have taken a pothole damaged tyre on the chin, and if others did the same, there'd be a whole lot extra cash in the bank to actually repair the road

Are you a troll? So we just accept it? What about the cyclist or motorcyclist who ends up injured - Oh that's ok is it. If I did my job as poorly as the Councils I'd get no more work. There are guys who push the paper around in the Council who get over 200k a year for NOT DOING THEIR JOB - Oh that's ok then, we'll just pay more

[RedSwede]

Fastpedeller said:

Are you a troll? So we just accept it?

Erm... No?

If the road has holes, report them. Keep hassling up the chain as required depending on the severity and uselessness of the council.

If the crapness of the road costs you a brand new £300 tyre, claim. But if it costs you the last mill of a tyre that was near replacement anyway, consider not claiming for that to leave some cash in the coffers to do actual repairs.

[theboss]

RedSwede said:

Fastpedeller said:

Are you a troll? So we just accept it?

Erm... No?

If the road has holes, report them. Keep hassling up the chain as required depending on the severity and uselessness of the council.

If the crapness of the road costs you a brand new £300 tyre, claim. But if it costs you the last mill of a tyre that was near replacement anyway, consider not claiming for that to leave some cash in the coffers to do actual repairs.

If you read the other thread by Ares you'll see that the £550 cost he mentions is for replacing both fronts which were on 3mm after destroying one. I'd be surprised if he got anywhere in trying for reimbursement of that whole cost, as it is clearly a piss-take.

I posted a pic of a tyre and wheel I just destroyed in similar circumstances - the rim is buckled and the tyre was a £350 20" winter with most of its tread. However I can't find an offending pothole in daylight so instead I have to just accept that a brick probably slid off the back of some cowboy's van and that I saved somebody else the pain of hitting it at 60mph. Indeed, sometimes we just have to take bad luck on the chin. But if I did find a pothole which caused it then I'd try and hold the council accountable for the true damage sustained - not a new set of wheels and alloys.

[Salamura]

The roads around where I live (Sussex) are a complete disgrace, not only in terms of quality (potholes, which spring up seemingly every other month, get filled up, and reappear almost instantly), but also in terms of quantity. There is a dire need for a proper re-design of the A27 and roads around it, as here we exist in a permanent state of gridlock (apart from at half term). I'm sure the same applies for 95% of this country.

There really is no excuse. The weather is also relatively favourable here, as the temperatures rarely dip below 0 C for prolonged periods of time, and summers are not hot. It is the freezing and unfreezing that destroys roads, as water gets in the crevices of the road, freezes, expands and opens a hole. Here this doesn't happen. In hot summers tarmac gets soft and more prone to sagging and distorting. Once again, this doesn't happen here.

So how come "poorer" European countries with much harsher weather systems and huge temperature deltas between summer and winter have so much better roads? I can only think it's due to incompetency and unwillingness to fix things. I don't see this getting any better with the expected and inevitable dip in economy after brexit, when also money will be less.

Brace yourselves and get high profile tyres!

[BigMon]

I burst a tyre on my wife's Cupra R on a narrow, unlit Devon road (back road from Marldon to Totnes if anyone is local). Hit the pothole so hard I thought I'd knackered the suspension. It was right on the edge of the road too (where you have to drive as the road is only just wide enough for two cars).

I worked at a local school at the time and one of our teachers hit the same pothole so hard he buckled his wheel.

Anyway, I tried to claim and they more or less said, after making me collect a bumper fun pack of evidence, 'fook off, see you in court' so that was £200 own the stter.

[HannsG]

How hard is it to fill a pothole? Seriously..

Every two weeks the same patch of road seems to be filled on way into work. Are the firms absolutely ste at it or something or onto a good thing in terms of coining it in.

[Moonhawk]

TurboHatchback said:

....why should Billy-Bob taxpayer on minimum wage fund shiny new wheels and tyres for you?

Billy-bob taxpayer on minimum wage doesn't ‘fund’ anything. They simply contribute about 1/3rd towards the cost of their own upkeep.

Such a person would pay about £1600 per year in income tax and NI - maybe another £1k in council tax and perhaps £1.5k in other taxes like VAT, fuel duty etc.

Public expenditure for 2018 will be over £12k for every man, woman and child.

[Limpet]

HannsG said:

How hard is it to fill a pothole? Seriously..

Every two weeks the same patch of road seems to be filled on way into work. Are the firms absolutely ste at it or something or onto a good thing in terms of coining it in.

Unless the edges of the repair are blended into the surrounding surface and properly sealed, water, plus stones, dirt and other abrasive debris will eventually get in around the edges of the repair, and start to weaken it. Overnight frosts at this time of year simply cause the trapped water to expand and crack the tarmac,allowing more water and debris in etc etc.

From what I see, pothole and utility excavation "repairs" usually involve a hasty dollop of tarmac, a bit of flattening down, and then moving on. There is no sealant on the edges of the repairs, including those done in our street in the past couple of weeks.

[Moonhawk]

Limpet said:

Unless the edges of the repair are blended into the surrounding surface and properly sealed, water, plus stones, dirt and other abrasive debris will eventually get in around the edges of the repair, and start to weaken it. Overnight frosts at this time of year simply cause the trapped water to expand and crack the tarmac,allowing more water and debris in etc etc.

From what I see, pothole and utility excavation "repairs" usually involve a hasty dollop of tarmac, a bit of flattening down, and then moving on. There is no sealant on the edges of the repairs, including those done in our street in the past couple of weeks.

Utility companies need to be held to account for this. If they cant repair the hole properly - they should be made to resurface the whole section.

[Boydie88]

wst said:

hame that entire section (up to Alconbury) should really be upgraded to motorway and have those bloody roundabouts taken out. Especially that one on Biggleswade (S) that keeps tipping lorries over. I hate Buckden-Biggleswade...

They have made a right mess of that roundabout. Sight lines are terrible, camber is ridiculous in places and the oval shape causes no end of people to drift across the lanes given the paint has already been rubbed off.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.0715215,-0.24319...

Why such a bulge on the left side?!

[Ares]

Cold said:

Ares said:

Furthermore, having a pothole, and in this case several potholes, on a blind bend, avoid them is not always easy.

In other words, you have a bad memory and your car has bad brakes and bad steering.

Yes. That's right

[Ares]

matthias73 said:

Ares said:

3. Lazy workforce/lackadaisical management that allow workers to spend most of the day sat doing nothing, except at the holy tea break, then it's a hive of activity.

Anyone sat in roadworks will see this first hand on majority of cases.

You know nothing about construction.

They wait for the tar, work like mad men then wait again.

Except the delays in questions were months before any tarmac was laid.

[Ares]

captain_cynic said:

Ares said:

3. Lazy workforce/lackadaisical management that allow workers to spend most of the day sat doing nothing, except at the holy tea break, then it's a hive of activity.

Anyone sat in roadworks will see this first hand on majority of cases.

I'd disagree that the workforce is lazy, just poorly managed. I'd bet the majority of the cases of people just sitting there are because they haven't been given a job to do and aren't permitted to do anything unless told to. It goes back to my second point about "license to bill".

Often in any engineering project, you're waiting for something else to be done before others can continue their work, competent project managers try to limit this downtime as people sitting around cost money.

You'll note I said Lazy workforce/lackadaisical management.

[underphil]

Ares said:

We've pushed a low tax culture. Millions and Millions of workers pay no tax at all. Then complain we don't have Scandinavian social structure (where pretty much everyone pays tax).

The notion of a £12,000 personal allowance is a great move....and takes anyone on minimum wage out of tax, and still give them extra top-up benefits - but it reduces the amount of tax collected. Can't have it both ways.

pretty much everyone in Scandinavia may pay tax, but worth noting that their minimum wage is generally more than double ours!

[Paul O]

Moonhawk said:

Utility companies need to be held to account for this. If they cant repair the hole properly - they should be made to resurface the whole section.

If I was in charge of the world, this would be in my manifesto. Any utility repair work to the roads would require a minimum resurfacing of kerb to central white-line in width, and 5 meters in length, properly sealed and guaranteed by the repairer for seven years (or resurface again at no cost).

I would also legislate that for new roads all grates, hose and other access points are at the centre point under a passing car, rather than the point where the wheels travel, thereby avoiding causing the inevitable stress on the tarmac and the resulting sinking in the road.

In doing that, the annoying Yorkshire water signs stating "Short Term Pain, Long Term Gain" would actually hold true for both punters of water in the area, as well as motorists who've put up with the st repair work for decades.

[Riley Blue]

Moonhawk said:

Limpet said:

Unless the edges of the repair are blended into the surrounding surface and properly sealed, water, plus stones, dirt and other abrasive debris will eventually get in around the edges of the repair, and start to weaken it. Overnight frosts at this time of year simply cause the trapped water to expand and crack the tarmac,allowing more water and debris in etc etc.

From what I see, pothole and utility excavation "repairs" usually involve a hasty dollop of tarmac, a bit of flattening down, and then moving on. There is no sealant on the edges of the repairs, including those done in our street in the past couple of weeks.

Utility companies need to be held to account for this. If they cant repair the hole properly - they should be made to resurface the whole section.

No, they should be made to repair properly. If they have to resurface a whole section it'll be more expensive and that extra cost will be passed on to utility users i.e. you and me.

[MDMetal]

Motorways aside the state of our roads is pretty shocking I regularly drive in various EU countries, we spent last weekend in northern France and flying down the A16 was bliss so perfectly smooth, better than most of our motorways. Country roads were all better. Romania also has reasonably decent roads, quality wise, yes they're not dual carriage ways but the surface is well maintained for the most part (smaller roads can be a bit less well looked after)

When people talk about how good our roads are I think they're confusing the fact we have drainage and kerbs at the edge vs the surface quality. On a good dry day we don't have good roads. They are better in worse conditions that some of the poorer EU countries tho but that's it. Poland had lovely roads when we were there. In fact I've rarely been somewhere I felt had terrible roads apart from my daily drives this last 6 months here in the UK.

[emicen]

Paul O said:

Someone mentioned that there is a £400m hole in the budget to repair roads.

According to Google there are £25m cars on the road in UK currently.

So how about a one off tax of an extra £100 for every car at next tax renewal?

That should see us straight for a good few years. Councils can't magic money for repairs, maybe we just need to stump up a bit more cash?

I would be curious to know where my share of the current £5.9bn annual VED take is going before committing to spend any more.

Limpet said:

A ring fenced 1p a litre addition to fuel duty would fill a £400m black hole in just over a year, based on a typical 36 billion retail litres of fuel sold in a year, as well as provide a healthy fund for ongoing maintenance.

If it was clear that the money would go to the road network and not get lost/wasted on other stuff, I'd happily support it. Something needs to be done.

Ring fencing the current £27bn would get the roads there a lot quicker though.

[both figures used 2014-2015]

One full parliamentary term of road revenues being spent on the roads would do wonders for our national infrastructure. But the entire road infrastructure investment planned for this parliament is less than 1 year’s VED and RFD.

Its incredibly difficult to find a number for what is earmarked for road repairs either at a national or local level.