Law on roadworks during early sunday morning clarification
- Thread starter chrcoluk
- Start date
This really.
I can understand if it's every day, but a one off occurrence. Some people need a life.
Soldato
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Try being me. We have a new housing estate being built and a massive project to divert the course of a river going on right outside our house. Work shouldn't start until 0800, but they're at it from 0600 until around 1600 and this is not just workmen with tools either, it's all manner of heavy plant too. It's a ******* nightmare that's been going on for months, and will be going on for quite some time.
Soldato
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Have you tried calling the police?
Is that because the gov changed the rules during lockdown to extend permitted working hours?
Road resurfacing in 7 hours?
The roads near where I work were done wrong when they were changed a few years back. Potholes you could grown a tree in soon ensued, especially where the road surfaces changed from stone bricks to tarmac. The intersections between materials weren't sealed. Parts sagged. Parts uplifted. There are >10cm height differences in places. The biggest pothole I saw myself was over a metre wide. Utter mess. Businesses were flooded when it rained because the shiny new expanses of pavement (conveniently the same colour and pattern as the roads and without any kerbs, which was a great idea) didn't have any drainage. None. At all. So it just gathered all the rain and poured it into wherever was lower. Some drainage was put in a while later, surrounded by what seems to be mostly fine sand with a little bit of some sort of filler. Which lasted a few weeks and now there are holes all over the place. Trip hazards aplenty. I'm pretty sure the whole job was done on the basis of the local councils looking at artist's impressions and selecting the ones they thought looked prettiest. There certainly wasn't any consideration given to functionality.
Anyway...the biggest pothole was causing major damage to buses so the bus companies were going to stop running buses on the routes which (due to the one way systems and the position of the bus station) had to go that way. That made it something that needed fixing. A crew came out and the surface was quickly taken off with some heavy machinery. A large area, not just around the pothole. The whole road for about a hundred metres. Done well and done quickly. And then left unsurfaced. We're making bets on how long it will remain that way. My bet's on 3 weeks. And then a low quality patching-up that will need to be redone in 6 months and won't be redone for a couple of years. Because the inadequate job will "save money", i.e. save a bit today and cost a lot more tomorrow.
EDIT:
Here's my guess as to what has happened and will happen:
Work crew take off the surface, see the extent of the deeper damage and think it's worse than can be fixed properly in the planned way. They report this. It gets assessed by someone suitably qualified, who agrees. The planned repair is too superficial - if that's done it'll look OK when it's finished but it won't hold up under use and 6 months down the line it'll be completely knacked again. A better repair that would last at least 10 years could be done, but it would take 2 days longer and cost 10% more. Of course, that would be far less disruptive and far cheaper than doing the same inadequate repair repeatedly. But it needs to be authorised by the council as it's not in the agreed works.
The council wastes days ignoring the recommendations and reasoning and then wastes more time and money getting someone else to look at it. They agree with the first assessment. The council wastes days ignorning them too. The council then tells the work crew to go ahead with the inadequate repair, knowing that it's wrong, because it's "cheaper" and "less disruptive". Despite the fact that it obviously isn't because the whole job will have to be redone over and over again because it's not being done properly.
The work crew shrug and do the inadequate repair, knowing that it's an inadequate repair. That's what the customer wants, so that's what they do. They've told the customer it's a bad idea that won't hold up and the customer has ignored them. Nothing they can do about that and it's future work for them when they're paid to repair the repair.
Then the council asks about the possibility of "saving" more money by repairing the road with bulk buy plaster filler painted black to match the tarmac. Or maybe some plasticine.
The roads near where I work were done wrong when they were changed a few years back. Potholes you could grown a tree in soon ensued, especially where the road surfaces changed from stone bricks to tarmac. The intersections between materials weren't sealed. Parts sagged. Parts uplifted. There are >10cm height differences in places. The biggest pothole I saw myself was over a metre wide. Utter mess. Businesses were flooded when it rained because the shiny new expanses of pavement (conveniently the same colour and pattern as the roads and without any kerbs, which was a great idea) didn't have any drainage. None. At all. So it just gathered all the rain and poured it into wherever was lower. Some drainage was put in a while later, surrounded by what seems to be mostly fine sand with a little bit of some sort of filler. Which lasted a few weeks and now there are holes all over the place. Trip hazards aplenty. I'm pretty sure the whole job was done on the basis of the local councils looking at artist's impressions and selecting the ones they thought looked prettiest. There certainly wasn't any consideration given to functionality.
Anyway...the biggest pothole was causing major damage to buses so the bus companies were going to stop running buses on the routes which (due to the one way systems and the position of the bus station) had to go that way. That made it something that needed fixing. A crew came out and the surface was quickly taken off with some heavy machinery. A large area, not just around the pothole. The whole road for about a hundred metres. Done well and done quickly. And then left unsurfaced. We're making bets on how long it will remain that way. My bet's on 3 weeks. And then a low quality patching-up that will need to be redone in 6 months and won't be redone for a couple of years. Because the inadequate job will "save money", i.e. save a bit today and cost a lot more tomorrow.
EDIT:
Here's my guess as to what has happened and will happen:
Work crew take off the surface, see the extent of the deeper damage and think it's worse than can be fixed properly in the planned way. They report this. It gets assessed by someone suitably qualified, who agrees. The planned repair is too superficial - if that's done it'll look OK when it's finished but it won't hold up under use and 6 months down the line it'll be completely knacked again. A better repair that would last at least 10 years could be done, but it would take 2 days longer and cost 10% more. Of course, that would be far less disruptive and far cheaper than doing the same inadequate repair repeatedly. But it needs to be authorised by the council as it's not in the agreed works.
The council wastes days ignoring the recommendations and reasoning and then wastes more time and money getting someone else to look at it. They agree with the first assessment. The council wastes days ignorning them too. The council then tells the work crew to go ahead with the inadequate repair, knowing that it's wrong, because it's "cheaper" and "less disruptive". Despite the fact that it obviously isn't because the whole job will have to be redone over and over again because it's not being done properly.
The work crew shrug and do the inadequate repair, knowing that it's an inadequate repair. That's what the customer wants, so that's what they do. They've told the customer it's a bad idea that won't hold up and the customer has ignored them. Nothing they can do about that and it's future work for them when they're paid to repair the repair.
Then the council asks about the possibility of "saving" more money by repairing the road with bulk buy plaster filler painted black to match the tarmac. Or maybe some plasticine.
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Where I live there's usually notice of roadworks in advance to allow people be aware . Signposted for about a week plus at least.
They do try to balance inconvenience to the public with trying to get the work done. Perhaps they should do more at night so people can get Where they're going easily in the day, but then some would complain that they're keeping them awake at night.
They do try to balance inconvenience to the public with trying to get the work done. Perhaps they should do more at night so people can get Where they're going easily in the day, but then some would complain that they're keeping them awake at night.
Yeah. If its replacement of the wear layer easily achievable.
Planer in to take off the top layer. Wagons constantly feeding a paver. Couple of rollers to follow up.
Soldato
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That's what you get when you have a council as corrupt as ours is.
Soldato
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When it comes to digging up the road they can do pretty much what they want when there was a water leak here they were outside until 1.30 am with heavy machinery and trucks and pneumatic drills and I mean right outside the windows
They were resurfacing the main road through this 'burb from 8pm to 6am for weeks luckily thats not me but I can't imagine anyone in the houses or flats down there got much sleep
They were resurfacing the main road through this 'burb from 8pm to 6am for weeks luckily thats not me but I can't imagine anyone in the houses or flats down there got much sleep
That's not how it's done round here. Another local example, which I got directly from someone who works in the trade:
A pipe was broken during some works. It was a two day job at a normal pace, 1 day at a push. One team digs it out, another team replaces a section of pipe, first team fills it in and makes good. The job took 3 weeks. Why? Because the companies involved were paid by the day so they had every reason to spin it out as long as possible. Why get paid for 2 days when you can do the same amount of work and get paid for 20 days?
This kind of thing seems to be going on all over the country and starting to annoy me a lot - the zombie like disconnect that never seems to get bridged between decision making and practical side, putting off cost now only to result in completely foreseeable increase cost and disruption later, etc.
Reminds me of something that happened a few years back at my old house, there was work ongoing on the railway nearby which is under different regulations to roads, etc. after 3 nights of constant bangs and crashes, shouting, reversing vehicles, etc. from around 11pm to 6am the police were called who shut it down, the railway company actually sent someone out door to door to apologise for the inconvenience and said they were putting a higher level supervisor on when any work was done... strangely enough they managed to get the work done with hardly any noise after that - apparently you can move rails around, etc. in almost silence if you try :s
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The most blatant such disconnect that I know of personally was regarding some equipment in a business. That piece of equipment in one of the many sites owned by the business developed a fault. At that point in time, that particular version of the equipment was known to fail to meet incoming standards that were significantly higher than the existing standards. It was therefore known that the equipment would have to be replaced soon. The replacement costs had already been accounted for. The replacement equipment was already acquired and was already being installed in the various sites of the business. It was a big business with a lot of sites, so the replacement equipment was being installed in a rollout because that made far more sense than doing many replacements at many sites at the same time. That particular site wasn't due to have that piece of equipment replaced for a few weeks. But it was definitely being replaced in a few weeks. That was required. The replacement equipment was already in hand. The cost was already accounted for by the business (but hadn't yet been assigned to the site). But the company chose to spend ~£800 on a repair to the existing piece of equipment in addition to the ~£1200 for the replacement of that equipment a few weeks later. The replacement cost that the company had already spent anyway. There wasn't even a mindless pretence of a cost saving by spending less today but spending much more tomorrow. There was only mindless adherence to the doctrine of never replacing anything that could be repaired. Even if replacing it was cheaper. Even if it was being replaced anyway and the replacement cost had already been accounted for. "zombie" is the right metaphor.
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Have we got a Victor Meldrew Mark II in the making here? 
OP I get that it’s annoying being woken up earlier than one would like on a Sunday morning! It’s probably happened to us all at some point in our life’s but get a grip boy! Spare a thought for the actual problems going on in the world whether it’s wild fires, war, poverty, infections disease and a 7am start is starting to look deliciously tempting!
More to the point don’t you dare waste my tax money on calling out police officers.
More to the point don’t you dare waste my tax money on calling out police officers.