Road resurfacing

jonesey10

This is really start to piss me off now, I went out for a 80k ride round bedfordshire at the weekend and just want to vent my spleen on the state of the roads.
WTF is the reason for just laying down what can only be described as ballast on our roads. I'm sick to death of getting puntures and cuts in my legs cause idiot motorists think it's funny to drive past me doing 50 showering me with sharp stones.
I've ridden in France on there beautiful smooth tarmac roads so why can't we surface our roads the same?

I never wrote Wee-wee, honest.

redddraggon

They're doing that in North Wales aswell, a right PITA.

Parkey

jonesey10 wrote:

I've ridden in France on there beautiful smooth tarmac roads so why can't we surface our roads the same?

Because in France the level of taxation is higher and transport isn't their government's cinderella department?

Coincidentally this is happening near where I live too. I don't have a problem with it, but I don't understand why it's left like this for... well, over a week so far.

CarlosFerreiro

If the road only needs surfacing dressing, you only surface dress it, to lay a new layer of asphalt over the top would cost 10x as much - like if you're windows need painting, you paint them, you don't put in new windows every 5 years.....

I know it would be nice if the roads were all new surfaces, but with the money road maintenance gets at the moment, it will not happen. Surface dressing works less well as the temperatures go up too..... so France etc might not really have that option.

redddraggon

CarlosFerreiro wrote:

If the road only needs surfacing dressing, you only surface dress it, to lay a new layer of asphalt over the top would cost 10x as much - like if you're windows need painting, you paint them, you don't put in new windows every 5 years.....

I know it would be nice if the roads were all new surfaces, but with the money road maintenance gets at the moment, it will not happen. Surface dressing works less well as the temperatures go up too..... so France etc might not really have that option.

Ah but the roads didn't even need touching, they were fine before they "improved" them.

CarlosFerreiro

Not enough texture? Surface oxidation? Reflection cracking?

Like i say, surface dressing is preventative, like paint, to extend the life of a new road as much as you can, or to keep an old road held together as long as possible until you get some money to do a real job of it.

downfader

I've noticed our local councils will leave problem areas of road surfacing for ages and ages - and finally when they do come to repair the road guys dont seem to fill the holes and cracks in properly resulting in dipping, bumps and more cracks opening up.

I understand that theres a lot of money that needs going into this, but with money so tight why can councils not get their guys to do a good job of repair. They've repaired a couple of the major problems I reported to them earlier this year, trouble is it looks like the guy has just stamped it down rather than compressing it properly - it also seems he hasnt used enough filler as it has dipped already. :?

Beeblebrox

Surface dressing is a bit dodgy on corners for a while, but I prefer it to potholes & uneven surface. It is just far too expensive to do anything more substantial.

Just make sure your mudguards are on! (Although that did scare the crap out of me the first time I went onto the dressing with the loud cracks pinging off the guards.)

jonesey10

Beeblebrox wrote:

Surface dressing is a bit dodgy on corners for a while, but I prefer it to potholes & uneven surface. It is just far too expensive to do anything more substantial.

Just make sure your mudguards are on! (Although that did scare the crap out of me the first time I went onto the dressing with the loud cracks pinging off the guards.)

You don't think surface dressing is an uneven surface?
They wouldn't surface dress a dual carriageway so why an a road or a b road.
It's bull, another cost cutting exercise even though we're taxed to death.

Mudguards??? hmmm, no thanks.
anyway, it's not the stones from my tyres that do the damage, it's drivers zipping past in the loose stuff.

Nigel-YZ1

Rotherham council says it can ony afford to repair 500 metres of road a year.

They top dressed the main road near me - the whole lot started stripping clean off. It's so bad if made the front page of the local paper. Of course they said they were 'investigating'. Or in other words they'll just wait until the whole lot wears away.

A couple of major dual carriageways had steel slag used as the base by the contractors. This expanded. There's now bumps and ridges you could beat Evel Knievel's jump records off. The answer - The council has to pay to fix it when they can afford it, the contractor seems to have no liability for using the crap in the first place.

We're in a world where a zebra crossing costs £100,000.

On Sunday I went for a pootle out to the totally misnamed 'Robin Hood' Airport. Under Doncaster council the roads were smooth & unblemished. So it looks like it's the luck of the draw. You need a local authority that gives a damn.

downfader

Nigel-YZ1 wrote:

Rotherham council says it can ony afford to repair 500 metres of road a year.

They top dressed the main road near me - the whole lot started stripping clean off. It's so bad if made the front page of the local paper. Of course they said they were 'investigating'. Or in other words they'll just wait until the whole lot wears away.

A couple of major dual carriageways had steel slag used as the base by the contractors. This expanded. There's now bumps and ridges you could beat Evel Knievel's jump records off. The answer - The council has to pay to fix it when they can afford it, the contractor seems to have no liability for using the crap in the first place.

We're in a world where a zebra crossing costs £100,000.

On Sunday I went for a pootle out to the totally misnamed 'Robin Hood' Airport. Under Doncaster council the roads were smooth & unblemished. So it looks like it's the luck of the draw. You need a local authority that gives a damn.

I think Southampton won a booby-prize for the state of its roads, lol! So I can see where some of you guys are coming from. The surface dressed one of our roads nearby after the potholes and cracks caused damage to cars - but the guys doing it didnt fill the holes in before dressing :roll:

Jez mon

Down my ride they've surface dressed the part of the road which was OK starting to wear. HOWEVER, there are places in the road which are really bad. These have just been left.

Why not repair the 200 meters or so of terrible road and leave the 1000 meters of tired road.

chuckcork

About 50% of the road I regularly cycle to work on is a dream, wide hard shoulder and spotless.

My personal gripe is that they do no cleaning of it, as I'm regularly removing objects from it, vis: shredded truck tyres, hubcaps, 4x2's and other bits of timber, mudguards and so on, that would otherwise cause me or some other cyclist grief sooner rather than later. Thats not considering the large bits of gravel that make the carriageway next to where I cycle so attractive, if it wasn't for the 20 tonne trucks travelling at around 100kph also using it.

E.g. this morning I hit one item, the buckle of a strap used on side flaps for trucks, while I was looking back to see if it was safe to cross a slip lane, and had my nice almost new front wheel slightly damaged as a result, so its off to the bike shop tomorrow to get it properly straightened out. :x

And tonight I had to avoid a door that appeared since yesterday on one of the less wide and less good bits! :shock:

Any suprise I've emailed a complaint to Cork County Council? Not that I expect to get anything other than a patronising response about what a wonderful job they do once a year.

stevechambers34

given that most 'new' drivers are young (under 20) and the cost of insurance is very high for this group couldn't the huge amount of VAT from the insurance premiums be used to fund the roads and perhaps it's time roadtax actualy was spent on the roads....my nephew just got his first car for £600 ,he is 19 and his insurance is ......£2300! ! ! if VAT /IPT is on insurance and I am pretty sure it will be...even at 10% that would be £230 and I guess it will be nearer 17.5% !
Perhaps we should name and shame councils that fail to keep good surfaces, in Derbyshire at the moment many road surfaces are pretty dire IMHO, not nice at all with n105psi skinny tyres, yet on a recent visit to Louth in Lincolnshire they were very good IMHO(locals may know better). I know Derbyshire is a busy county and there are loads of road works at present but really bad surfaces are hardly likely to encourage new cyclists to start riding.

jedster

They've done some surface dressing near me. A lot of it has just disappeared leaving a very smooth surface. They are in the process of doing it again. False economy?

The thing that really annoys me is when utility companies/cable companies dig up the road for a trench and don't do a good job of making good - you get left with a ridge or a trench which you can't avoid.

What I want to know is why the council don't go back to the companies and get them to do it again. I'd require utilities to photograph each job and submit it to the council. If the repair then failed they could be held accountable.

J

spen666

stevechambers34 wrote:

given that most 'new' drivers are young (under 20) and the cost of insurance is very high for this group couldn't the huge amount of VAT from the insurance premiums be used to fund the roads and perhaps it's time roadtax actualy was spent on the roads....my nephew just got his first car for £600 ,he is 19 and his insurance is ......£2300! ! ! if VAT /IPT is on insurance and I am pretty sure it will be...even at 10% that would be £230 and I guess it will be nearer 17.5% !
Perhaps we should name and shame councils that fail to keep good surfaces, in Derbyshire at the moment many road surfaces are pretty dire IMHO, not nice at all with n105psi skinny tyres, yet on a recent visit to Louth in Lincolnshire they were very good IMHO(locals may know better). I know Derbyshire is a busy county and there are loads of road works at present but really bad surfaces are hardly likely to encourage new cyclists to start riding.

Given it was abolished in the 1930s, I think it may have all been spent by now