Reporting rural potholes?

DanielCoffey

I would like to pick your brains about the sorts of road defects to report on rural B-roads and which to just accept as inevitable.

I will soon be moving to rural Scotland and have been using Google Street View to have a look around the likely B-road routes I will have to travel on. While doing so I spotted road issues that I would not hesitate to report if they were in a city with high traffic but perhaps understandably may have to be tolerated in a rural setting.

I have seen the usual moderate pothole - the sort of thing you can easily swerve around on a quiet road, especially if you know it is there. Those I would understand could be left. Then there are the longer stretches of deteriorated surface tarmac where you feel you are going over a cattle grid. Those can be mitigated by fatter tyres (700x35C in my case). Finally I have seen the sort of deep "wheel-cruncher" potholes that are a risk to both cyclist and motorist alike and also the subsidence issues where water has undercut the road substrate causing a curved crack going from the edge, out into the road and back out again. I would certainly expect to report both of those defect types.

So... what are your opinions? Report 'em all and let the Council decide? Report the serious stuff and be persistent in following it up?

Man Of Lard

Report them all, make reference to http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1980/66/section/56 and sit back and wait

davis

Report everything via fillthathole; some day someone might (hopefully not) need a paper trail.

keef66

There was a belter a couple of miles from the house a couple of months ago. Somebody took a very hands-on approach to pointing it out; they painted a huge knob on the road, with the pothole forming the bellend, and added some instructions for the local authority "FIX IT YOU IDIOTS!!!" in 2 foot high letters.

It was promptly filled

Anyone care to claim responsibility? The road between Chevely and Stetchworth, just outside Newmarket...

DanielCoffey

Interesting point about the paper trail in the case of a future accident. I had not considered that.

I do have the app already as it works (and is acted upon) really well and I am fairly sure the majority of the route has 2G coverage so I should be able to get a reasonable location via smartphone.

I think at the end of the day, as long as my expectations about the road surface quality are reasonable, I should report pretty much everything. If not me, then who will?

anonymousblackfg

Do consider using fillthathole or fixmystreet which the latter also comes as an App. That said some local Authorities have started refusing to accept them. They will publicly say because of technical difficulties but I believe it is more about they don't want public reports to avoid liability for accidents caused or public records of their inaction. I questioned Kingston about this and oddly they reinstated them, seems Merton are now trying this dodge.

wolfsbane2k

Report them all.
Fixthathole is the CTC supported one, and also has an app.
I use it very regularly, only takes a second to snap profits and report if you have GPS on.

awavey

some of the rural roads I ride on, which are B roads, not some horse and cart track in the back of beyond, its not uncommon to have grass growing out the middle of them, so I dont know, but do people on the whole report potholes, if the councils end up just "relying" on that kind of system because of the paper trail

its just there was one I saw the other week, on a country road but its fairly main route, at least the size of a dinner plate with a thickness of the tarmac layer, with another fist sized hole inside it probably another few inches deeper, and people were just merrily driving through it as if it was just a minor bump in the road.

I reported it to the council, because it wouldnt just be a puncture if you hit that, youd be buckling a front wheel or falling off into the path of any vehicle, and they came out did an emergency temporary filler repair, over the weekend, and the next week had properly patched it.

and you think hold on, if Id not reported it, how long would it have stayed like that?

thistle_

Report them anyway. I'd say "rough" and "worn" roads are tolerable in rural areas but potholes are not. Equally where the highway authority have "repaired" a rough/worn road and made it worse is not acceptable.

Do it on fillthathole etc. but be aware that a lot of highway authorities ignore it and will say they never received any report from the websites so also report it to them directly.
I'm nice and report it to them on their own website first, then when I get the standard reply saying they might send someone to look at it within 28 days I send them a paper section 56 notice which usually gets the job done.

It's sad that the only way to get dangerous potholes repaired is to threaten them with legal action though.

wolfsbane2k

awavey wrote:

and you think hold on, if Id not reported it, how long would it have stayed like that?

Forever. in my expeirence, many councils don't do any inspections, so it would have taken someone else to do it.
And given that it was as bad as it was, and people weren't complaining.... that would have been a lot longer.

I know of a road near me that I travel down very occasionaly, that has large tippers go down it. it had a tennis ball sized wide, but 1cm deep pothole in October, so i reported it, response as "not worth it". went last week and it had grown to the size of a car tyre, and a foot deep.

Nobody had reported it -filled in 2 days after I reported it again.

Man Of Lard

Wolfsbane2k wrote:

awavey wrote:

and you think hold on, if Id not reported it, how long would it have stayed like that?

Forever. in my expeirence, many councils don't do any inspections,

They do - they are bound to by law - but the frequency is nothing like you would hope.

Here - primary (A roads) under local authority control get inspected every quarter. There are less than 300 miles of these... Secondary (B roads) get inspected once every 6 months and the rest once per year.

Make an appointment at council HQ to inspect the reports - if they refuse send an FOI request.

wolfsbane2k

Man Of Lard wrote:

Wolfsbane2k wrote:

awavey wrote:

and you think hold on, if Id not reported it, how long would it have stayed like that?

Forever. in my expeirence, many councils don't do any inspections,

<snip>
Make an appointment at council HQ to inspect the reports - if they refuse send an FOI request.

Yeah, a roads are supposed to be monthly, b-roads quarterly, and others annually. I'm actually really, really tempted to ask for the inspection records for some specific roads near me as one has a "test" pothole I've not reported just to see if anyone else does ( sad like that)

Man Of Lard

Me too. My current "project" is getting to the bottom of the process of marking out for (permanent) patching and the execution of the patching itself.

Seems there are quite a few things awry with it.

1. The marker comes out and marks the parts for patching. He doesn't seem to always mark out the worst parts - there are some marked for patching that are less damaged than those he didn't mark. So a lack of consistency.

2. The delay between marking & patching - often this goes so long that the marking has been worn off by traffic and/or weather. Also the holes marked for patching have often grown beyond the markings.

3. When the patching crew turns up they seemingly ignore some marks (so the patch does not reach the marks) yet stick rigidly to others (so a circular hole 15'" diameter gets a stripe 12" wide across part of it, leaving a hole shaped like an orange segment) - this by the same crew in the same series of patching - they are consistently inconsistent in their following the markings.

4. They appear to use a combination of a corrugated road roller and shovels to level it when completed. So the virgin new tarmac is pre-ribbed for nobody's pleasure and certainly does nothing for longevity of the repair.

5. When patching the running lanes - these are so worn that there are depressions where most of the vehicle traffic has run - so in profile the road is \_/\_/ - when patched (with the pre-ribbed arrangement in 4) those patches are flat in profile, typically level with the unfitted surface, so at the start and end of each and every patch there is a step up/down of up to 15mm - I can tell you it doesn't do the longevity of the patching, such as it is, any favours at all.