The state of our road network

[Herned]

It seems that surface dressing has fallen out of favour (NH don't use it at all), leaving SMA surfaces to deteriorate until it has to be taken off and replaced. A lot of people consider surface dressing to be a cheap and nasty alternative to 'proper' surfacing but you can eke quite a good few more years' life from the surface if you seal it up and stop water getting into the material

My local council (Somerset) does lots of it still - they usually produce a list of the roads to be treated every summer around now.

Devon did it on the NDLR a few years ago, which was "interesting"

[Glenn A]

It's not just maintenance budgets that are the problem with potholes being worse than they used to be: the amount of traffic on the roads has doubled in the last 40 years, cars have become bigger and heavier, as have many commercial vehicles, and the roads are taking a huge pounding. Also a long spell of very wet winters and floods must have damaged road surfaces as well.

[fras]

It's not just maintenance budgets that are the problem with potholes being worse than they used to be: the amount of traffic on the roads has doubled in the last 40 years, cars have become bigger and heavier, as have many commercial vehicles, and the roads are taking a huge pounding. Also a long spell of very wet winters and floods must have damaged road surfaces as well.

So one has to ask why moneys allocated by central and local government for roads maintenance have been ruthlessly reduced over the past 15 years ? The government collect and publish the statistics so are well aware of the problem. I believe it has been said that the average time now between road resurfacing is 100 years ! My own local council, Cheshire East have stated in committee that the backlog is now £200 million, £180 million last year. Budget for 2024/25 is around £12 million.

https://moderngov.cheshireeast.gov.uk/e ... 0216&Ver=4

[darkcape]

This is a topic I've also noticed recently. I work in highways construction, so am aware of the funding issues, but over the last 12 months I've watched small defects open up into full chasms, bodge repair, watch the repair fail, rinse & repeat. A couple of real bad areas:

Recreate the experience of driving over the Somme battlefields

This isnt so bad on Streetview, but traffic actively swerves into the oncoming lanes to avoid craters here

[Debaser]

It's not just maintenance budgets that are the problem with potholes being worse than they used to be: the amount of traffic on the roads has doubled in the last 40 years, cars have become bigger and heavier, as have many commercial vehicles, and the roads are taking a huge pounding. Also a long spell of very wet winters and floods must have damaged road surfaces as well.

So one has to ask why moneys allocated by central and local government for roads maintenance have been ruthlessly reduced over the past 15 years ? The government collect and publish the statistics so are well aware of the problem. I believe it has been said that the average time now between road resurfacing is 100 years ! My own local council, Cheshire East have stated in committee that the backlog is now £200 million, £180 million last year. Budget for 2024/25 is around £12 million.

My memory may be faulty (and though never working for a Local Authority), but for the near 30 years I have been in the industry it has been a tale of highways maintenance budgets being the first thing to be cut when an LA's operating budget is cut, or monies otherwise need to be reallocated. And frankly who can blame those who set the budgets? For example, for Leeds City Council spending is roughly as follows (out of a total budget of approximately £700m);

Adult social care - £208m
Children's services - £164m
Refuse collection, street cleaning and waste disposal - £66m
Other (including environmental health and community safety etc) - £49m
Public transport support - £35m
Leisure - £33m
Accessible services and reducing poverty - £32m
Roads - £18m
Housing - £10m
Libraries and learning - £8m
TOTAL - £622m (Police and fire get another £80m combined)

So, how many community centres, care homes, supported housing or mental health services do Leeds City Council close? Photogenic groups of elderly and disabled people protesting such closures don't look good in the press.

Children's services? Leeds is a northern city - would you risk it becoming another Rotherham, Keighley, Rochdale or Newcastle for want of a few quid spent on CPS? Again, that wouldn't look good in the press, there'd be calls for prison for those who made that decision, at the very least.

Refuse collection? Shades of the Winter of Discontent for those of a certain age.

I for one like to know my takeaway doesn't comprise sweet and sour rat, so environmental health ain't going to be cut on my watch.

Public transport coverage is already patchy, removing subsidies for rural routes? See those photos of photogenic protestors against community centre closures above.

Sports centres? Yes, private gyms exist, but can schools access their pools to teach kids to swim? Indeed, are they affordable for anyone on a low income?

Reducing poverty and accessible services, laudable aims.

Which pretty much leaves roads almost at the bottom of the list as an unseen Cinderella service, with an ever present threat of budget cuts. Only to become anything of a priority when you finally get a critical mass of a page full of photos of disgruntled residents and motorists pointing at potholes. A point at which you're potentially beyond the need for simple patching, but full reconstruction (that road pavements have finite lifetimes - indeed, they are designed as such - does not seem to be widespread knowledge amongst the general public or politicians).

[fras]

This disused railway bridge near Nantwich has been single-lane traffic light-controlled for nearly 15 years. One supposes it is a weight issue of some kind, but there are no weight limits on the bridge. The road across is now in a dreadful condition and on the south side, the road is starting to slip sideways.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/HtEfGab6uGhSQdDn9
GSV shows the traffic lights there in 2009
https://maps.app.goo.gl/2Vh7K2EzHcYkzpEE6
So absolutely nothing has been done to fix the problem in 15 years at least. We've lived in the area since 1995, but I cannot remember when the road had its normal, uncontrolled, 2-lanes. There will, no doubt, be places like this all over the UK. A total failure of government, central and local.

[AnOrdinarySABREUser]

This disused railway bridge near Nantwich has been single-lane traffic light-controlled for nearly 15 years. One supposes it is a weight issue of some kind, but there are no weight limits on the bridge. The road across is now in a dreadful condition and on the south side, the road is starting to slip sideways.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/HtEfGab6uGhSQdDn9
GSV shows the traffic lights there in 2009
https://maps.app.goo.gl/2Vh7K2EzHcYkzpEE6
So absolutely nothing has been done to fix the problem in 15 years at least. We've lived in the area since 1995, but I cannot remember when the road had its normal, uncontrolled, 2-lanes. There will, no doubt, be places like this all over the UK. A total failure of government, central and local.

How is it starting to slip sideways, exactly? Is it because of the excess weight exerted onto the bridge? If so, that's an extremely serious problem that needs looking at. I'm incredibly surprised that no attention has been given to this bridge.

[fras]

This disused railway bridge near Nantwich has been single-lane traffic light-controlled for nearly 15 years. One supposes it is a weight issue of some kind, but there are no weight limits on the bridge. The road across is now in a dreadful condition and on the south side, the road is starting to slip sideways.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/HtEfGab6uGhSQdDn9
GSV shows the traffic lights there in 2009
https://maps.app.goo.gl/2Vh7K2EzHcYkzpEE6
So absolutely nothing has been done to fix the problem in 15 years at least. We've lived in the area since 1995, but I cannot remember when the road had its normal, uncontrolled, 2-lanes. There will, no doubt, be places like this all over the UK. A total failure of government, central and local.

How is it starting to slip sideways, exactly? Is it because of the excess weight exerted onto the bridge? If so, that's an extremely serious problem that needs looking at. I'm incredibly surprised that no attention has been given to this bridge.

The embankment leading up to the bridge is starting to slip down and sideways from the location of a filled trench visible on the GSV view. In the absence of funding, the obvious spatchcock is to lengthen the single lane section by moving the traffic lights on the south side further south. A few years ago a similar situation started on the A51 north of Wardle where the Chester Canal runs alongside. This was dealt with fairly quickly. The additional HGV traffic from the rapidly expanding industrial estate on the old Wardle aerodrome didn't help, obviously !
https://maps.app.goo.gl/Z3a9mEmXif9fpfrB6

[Chris56000]

. . .Sooner or later one of these neglected bridges will collapse totally, whether due to subsidence, flooding due to heavy rainfall, a HGV damaging it or some other cause, and who will the finger be pointed at then?

. . .The local authority? Richie Sunak?

Chris Williams