The State of our roads !!

signs

signs

signs

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25 Oct 2016
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In 35 years of motoring i can honestly say the state of our roads is the worst i have ever seen !

I drive through a small part of both Staffordshire and Derbyshire on my commute to work and the potholes are shocking if not dangerous

We pay for the upkeep of these roads !

rant over :)
 
Our roads are really not that bad compared to the rest of Europe / the world. Do a driving tour of Europe, or spend a weekend driving around somewhere like NYC or Houston and you’ll see what I mean. Sure, there’s always room for improvement but trust me, they could be so much worse.
 
They just "repaired" a bunch of huge potholes near work and even the repair is comically bad. Its like they just threw some tarmac over them as they drove by. They are right on a long 60mph corner as well so quite dangerous.
 
Round here their idea of patching or fixing the roads is comical. Instead of doing the whole area they just do the bit so the roads are a patch work bumpy mess.

I was in Dubai last week and the roads were so smooth and faultless, especially when you consider how many cars travel on them.
 
The road leading to my road is the worst I've seen in my town. It's horrible to go down, and in a slightly lowered, fully polybushed car? No thanks. I'll go in the other end of the road.
 
Potholes definitely getting worse around here... noticeable increase from the recent cold spells.

Some of them could cause some serious damage, especially to a motorcyclist...
 
There does seem to have been a spate of potholes opening up in my local area. I've reported several over the last few days, and some real nasty ones as well - not large in area, but quite deep and sharply profiled, and several on high speed roads where they could cause real damage. My girlfriend actually phoned me to tell me she'd hit one recently that was so bad that she thought something might be damaged, but her Sorento has big tyres which seems to have saved any damage - but a close friend hit the same pothole and lost the tyre and I think buckled the wheel of his A3.

www.fixmystreet.com - in my experience, reporting potholes through here has seen them fixed fairly quickly, so get reporting!
 
signs said:
In 35 years of motoring i can honestly say the state of our roads is the worst i have ever seen !

I drive through a small part of both Staffordshire and Derbyshire on my commute to work and the potholes are shocking if not dangerous

We pay for the upkeep of these roads !

rant over :)
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Can we get winter over before you start ranting? It's water getting into the imperfections and freezing that causes the things in the first place. Fixing fast appearing potholes in freezing conditions within a couple of days isn't possible. Patching them up doesn't last and is poor use of resources. This is why they have planned inspections and maintenance.

If it's a really bad one, report it using the internet forms readily available and it'll get prioritised.
 
Defending our roads with "they could be worse", is a pretty poor defence.

What I find most frustrating is the lack of consistency. In general, motorways are pretty good (the loud surface disregarded, probably a cost thing?), as are major A-roads, i.e. roads maintained by the Highways Agency. They seem to be fairly consistently fine and repaired pretty quickly, although there are some nasty potholes appearing on the M3 near Basingstoke, as an example.

The rubbish roads are council roads. IMHO, roads should be managed centrally, all by the Highways Agency. I believe this is the case in other countries. Councils make crap decisions on road surfaces and maintenance and don't take long-term views of things. The other thing is how companies who dig up the roads for gas, etc. don't have to return the road to the original condition. This should be made into law.
 
OK, and where's the money coming from...

I work for local government. Go check your local council's budget changes since 2010...
 
Check what has happened to council budgets since 2015.

https://www.ft.com/content/9c6b5284-6000-11e7-91a7-502f7ee26895

Since council tax rises are capped, the budgets decrease every year since government funding is cut far more quickly than can be raised via council tax.

In 2015/16, councils received £9.9bn in Revenue Support Grant (RSG). By 2019/20, they will get £2.2bn. There are a range of other grants, such as a bonus for building new homes, or to address needs in deprived areas. They also receive the £26bn raised annually by business rates, though this is redistributed, with poorer councils receiving more than they collect locally. Nevertheless, the LGA says local government as a whole in England would have £15.7bn less central government funding by 2020 than it did in 2010. Councils are responsible for education, housing, social care for the elderly and disabled, local roads, waste collection and other services.
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London councils which collect the most in business rates suffer the most as all that money is redistributed away. I imagine the same is true for other city councils.

Council tax raises a total of about £32bn which can be raised by a few percent every year.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...s-and-outs-how-hammonds-budget-figures-add-up
 
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Yeh potholes seem to be worse than ever. The council seem to be taking longer and longer to repair them aswell. There’s quite a few dangerous ones on my commute to work that have not been filled in despite the fact they have been there for over a month. Even when they fill them in it lasts about a week before ending up just as bad.
 
MagicBoy said:
Can we get winter over before you start ranting? It's water getting into the imperfections and freezing that causes the things in the first place. Fixing fast appearing potholes in freezing conditions within a couple of days isn't possible. Patching them up doesn't last and is poor use of resources. This is why they have planned inspections and maintenance.

If it's a really bad one, report it using the internet forms readily available and it'll get prioritised.
Click to expand...

I don't remember the roads ever being in such shabby condition. They seem to now be using poor quality tarmac or just not laying it properly (very rough and noisy, un-even). I've seen newly laid roads start to fall to bits within a couple of years and the surface is worse than the one it replaced. Yet there's a road near where my parents live that was done maybe 10-12 years ago and it's still as smooth as a racetrack.

Also the repairs themselves are so bad. Many are barely an improvement over the pothole!
 
Gigabit said:
Defending our roads with "they could be worse", is a pretty poor defence.

What I find most frustrating is the lack of consistency. In general, motorways are pretty good (the loud surface disregarded, probably a cost thing?), as are major A-roads, i.e. roads maintained by the Highways Agency. They seem to be fairly consistently fine and repaired pretty quickly, although there are some nasty potholes appearing on the M3 near Basingstoke, as an example.

The rubbish roads are council roads. IMHO, roads should be managed centrally, all by the Highways Agency. I believe this is the case in other countries. Councils make crap decisions on road surfaces and maintenance and don't take long-term views of things. The other thing is how companies who dig up the roads for gas, etc. don't have to return the road to the original condition. This should be made into law.
Click to expand...

Do you know any countries that have a central agency that deals with all roads? Mos places I know have the same system as the UK where local authorities and organizations deal with certain roads in certain places.
 
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