Vocal Voices

Look North has just told us that the government is sending £1.5 million to W. Yorks to help pay for pot hole repairs. I bet it will be spent repairing the previous pot hole repairs which were done to repair the previous pot hole repairs. If the Highways Department got onto these pot holes when they were embryonic they would not get so huge, dangerous and damaging to vehicles, and expensive to repair.

Anyhow, we don't need the money in Leeds, we have shed loads of it. We spend it on speed bumps, sleeping policemen, speed cushions, chicanes, smiley/frowny speed indicator signs, 20 MPH zone signage and reflective paint; anything to slow traffic and increase pollution. The pot holes are probably part of that estimable crusade.

Some years ago Frank one could sue the councils for damage to ones car.. Driving in UK today we could be in a third world country, the difference being in some third world countries regardless of the terrible roads one sees women sweepers in the early mornings on the road cleaning up the Debri.

Edinburgh had three collapsed manholes which caused total havoc and over a week of delays for each of them over the last two months.

Now they have a "pot hole" crew which is supposed to go to any pothole and throw some tar on it. Of course because they don't cut the hole square so it has sided to hold the tar, the busses and trucks just scoop it back out again in a week. Total and complete waste of money but a knee jerk reaction for a sound byte on the TV and news...

This country is run by half insane, half comedians....

Suff wrote:Edinburgh had three collapsed manholes which caused total havoc and over a week of delays for each of them over the last two months.

Now they have a "pot hole" crew which is supposed to go to any pothole and throw some tar on it. Of course because they don't cut the hole square so it has sided to hold the tar, the busses and trucks just scoop it back out again in a week. Total and complete waste of money but a knee jerk reaction for a sound byte on the TV and news...

This country is run by half insane, half comedians....

I could not agree more Suff.

The Government have also announced a shedload of pothole cash for the West Midlands as well, according to our local BBC News tonight, but I didn't take on board how much.

The problem in Birmingham is more that there was a huge contractual stitch up between the city council and Amey Roadstone. The latter took over the Highways department in 2010 for a 25 year period and guaranteed cash of £2.7bn. I'm not even going to think about the word "backhander" ......

Anyway, only one problem - Amey are absolutely shite at maintaining the roads. That is the informed opinion of most people, certainly in my suburb, and even the city council are getting "frustrated". Claims and counter-claims; this from last year:

http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/mi ... st-8858485

Our "village" shopping centre has a 40 mph by-pass, about a mile long. Potholes appeared. Amey patched them. Around the edges of the patches appeared further potholes. Amey patched them. Around the edges of the new patches appeared further potholes. Amey patched them. Repeat ad infinitum. The road now looks like a quilt and the whole damn thing needs properly and totally resurfacing. In the meantime they have taken two perfectly decent roundabouts at each end - and resurfaced them. Not only unnecessary, but they've done each roundabout in two circular whirls - a separate inner ring and an outer ring, if you like. Needless to say, the join between the two rings is now cracking open, and creating - a long circular pothole, right round the middle of the roundabout, which 9 times out of 10 you can't avoid. They've just started to patch one of them. You'd laugh if you didn't cry.

I've wondered about going down to one of the quarterly local Ward meetings and demanding that the local councillors haul an Amey representative in front of the next one to explain themselves ....

At least two things are happening here.

I do not know about anywhere else but round here most pot holes are around the edges of patches dug into the road by utilities companies or even in the patch they put in the road. when that is the case the utility company should be made to do the repair or pay for it to be done by the council.

The other thing is that resurfacing work seems to done on the cheap. It does not take long for the surface to start to fail in places, especially on bends and corners, and sometimes whole slabs of the new surface lift exposing the old road surface.

We also have crews going round filling in small pot holes but the standard of work is well below par. Some of the repairs are worse than the pot holes.