Honestly, the state of our national rod network is a disgrace. Potholes within potholes.
Now you can bump along in your car and think it's bad, but to get a real feel for the parlous state of the road surface you really have to get out on a bike. What the hell is going on?
We can't blame privatisation for this can we, the roads are all owned and maintained by local government.
No wonder people drive gas guzzler SUVs.
There's a lot of road works around Perth, but little in Angus
Not long home from a week pet sitting in Edinburgh and the reports of how bad it is there are very true indeed.
Made worse by the cycle lanes devised during Covid that are now a serious constriction, along with yet more tram works along the previously ripped up sections to Leith.
The answer is money. The road tax is gathered by the UK Government and then handed out pro-rata to the various authorities. Most of it goes to the SE of England, more cars and more roads, and decreases as it makes its way north.
https://www.racfoundation.org/motoring-faqs/economics#:~:text=It%20had%20remained%20around%20the,duties%20collected%20in%20the%20UK.
I don't fully buy into that as the reason Sandy. There are far fewer cars and miles of road up here so the budget is bound to be smaller. True the weather up here is worse but the traffic is lighter.
Angus council have a contract with "Bodgeit and Scarper", rarely get a proper job done.
Quote from: admin on July 03, 2023, 07:15:17 PMI don't fully buy into that as the reason Sandy. There are far fewer cars and miles of road up here so the budget is bound to be smaller. True the weather up here is worse but the traffic is lighter.
That is how it works. Less cars less road tax so less money given to fix the roads.
You really have to get out on a bike to see how bad the roads are. They are covered in small cracks you don't notice in a car but these cracks fill with water which freezes and expands then a new pothole is born.
There are many comments about road wear rates rising with electric cars and their considerable extra weight. Same reason for particulates being similarly high from extra brake and tyre wear. Unfortunately there is not a licence income!
The 40+ ton six axle artics don't help. Eleven tyres bouncing in a hole do more damage than the two on a car no matter what weight it is.
I would assume the contracts for fixing the roads goes to whoever offer the service at the cheapest price. Consequently they use the cheapest materials. The roads rarely get resurfaced, just filled in with cheap material which isn't even levelled off properly. Almost always washes back out the first time it rains. It's sometimes worse driving over their repair jobs than it is hitting the original pothole ;D
The problem is to reconstruct a carriageway requires large capital investment, so with limited budgets roads authorities tend to revert to patching. Things are further complicated by the fact that many of the major roads, while been owned by the Scottish Government, are maintained by contractors (Bear Scotland, Amey) or by concession holders (DBFO roads such as the M77/GSO, M74/M8/M73, M80, M74 from Douglas to the border and AWPR). While the SG are pretty good at managing the trunk road contractors and concession holders, they will endeavor to put off large capital works to the last moment.
I for one would not like to be cycling on the main roads around Kinrossshire, the edges of teh carriageway are a minefield of potholes and collapsed manholes (normally containing a destroyed cone upside down).
A few weeks ago I was going home in the evening on the A9 dual carriageway between Dunblane and the Crieff turn off. I passed 7 cars with their hazard lights on, four stopped in the carriageway and three in different lay-byes further on. On the village website in the morning 10 cars were reported with broken wheels and/or punctures. Breakdown vans were called in from lots of garages!! The inside carriageway was closed for two days until some patch repairs were done beside which there now is a sign showing "Uneven Surface".
Similar issues down here. A stretch of the M4 that runs from Swansea to Carmarthenshire has a bad surface. The answer is to stick some 50 signs over it. Welsh labour insist on making driving more miserable here too. The heads of the valley road is still being built which started in the 80s with average speed camera for 40mph for 18 miles. The old road was national speed limit. Once work is complete they want to have the full thin to a 50. From Cardiff through Newport M4 is 50 for "emissions" same with M4 through port Talbot. All they have done is caused more congestion. When they come to review the emissions tests they will say the 50mph were not successful in order to add a toll to use the M4.
They are also going to decrease all 30 areas to 20 in built up areas. Fucking bonkers
The Uk government want us out of our vehicles and back on public transport. I've heard some councils want to bring the factory towns back where everyone lives and works within the same proximity.