NYCC to sue HE over A63

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wrinkly
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NYCC to sue HE over A63

Post by wrinkly »

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-yo ... e-43071191
A council intends to sue Highways England after it built a "substandard" major road which cost the authority millions of pounds to make safe.

The A63 Selby bypass, designed to take heavy goods vehicles away from the town centre, was built in 2003 but within 10 years the surface had deteriorated.

North Yorkshire County Council said it was seeking to recoup some £7m costs that the agency was refusing to pay.

Highways England said it would be following necessary legal proceedings.

Responsibility for the bypass was transferred from the government to the council in 2009.

The authority said a short time after that, the road started to deteriorate badly and was the subject of regular complaints from residents, businesses and drivers.

The material used to surface the road had failed and investigations found problems with the structure and the lower layers of its construction.

The council said although financial liability for the costs of repairs had never been resolved, Highways England had initially said it would contribute.

Councillor Dan Mackenzie, North Yorkshire's executive member for highways, said: "We are very frustrated to find ourselves in a position where we have no choice, for the sake of the county's taxpayers, but to take direct legal action to recover £7m.

"This is most of the cost that resulted from the substandard construction of the bypass when it was first built."
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KeithW
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Re: NYCC to sue HE over A63

Post by KeithW »

As I understand it the major problem is that instead of using conventional materials for the road base they decided to use waste from mining and power stations this was justified in the name of Sustainability.

The Skanska web page on the Sustainability of the project includes the following.
http://www.skanska-sustainability-case-studies.com/index.php/latest-case-studies/item/120-a63-selby-bypass-uk?start=4 wrote:Mining and power station waste materials were used on the project, which reduced the need for quarrying and transporting non-renewable materials.
Given the previous history of failures using such materials somebody needs to carry the can.
M19
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Re: NYCC to sue HE over A63

Post by M19 »

Was the surfacing stone mastic asphalt by any chance? That wouldn't have helped.
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ravenbluemoon
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Re: NYCC to sue HE over A63

Post by ravenbluemoon »

Reading through the Motorway Archive it appears that the A1 south of Darrington made use of mining waste in the early 60s, I don't know if this has ever caused problems? Seemed a common thing on West Riding jobs of that period.
The Motorway Archive wrote:Some 250,000 cu. yds. of imported fill was brought to site on narrow roads to supplement deficiencies of cut available from site. Much use was made of the coalfield tips. Some of the shale was of excellent quality reserved for the sub-base of the road. This hard well burnt red shale literally "rattled" out of the trucks when tipped on a formation. Many of the tips had been smothered with soil during the war years to hide the glow that was emitted, these had purposely been set alight to render the unburnt clay, which was prevalent in the coal seams, to a more useful product. Nevertheless constant selection was necessary and tips in the Featherstone, Syndale and Bently areas were much used. Many a loaded truck burst into flames if the material became too hot and reacted to exposure through digging operations.
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KeithW
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Re: NYCC to sue HE over A63

Post by KeithW »

ravenbluemoon wrote:Reading through the Motorway Archive it appears that the A1 south of Darrington made use of mining waste in the early 60s, I don't know if this has ever caused problems? Seemed a common thing on West Riding jobs of that period.
The Motorway Archive wrote:Some 250,000 cu. yds. of imported fill was brought to site on narrow roads to supplement deficiencies of cut available from site. Much use was made of the coalfield tips. Some of the shale was of excellent quality reserved for the sub-base of the road. This hard well burnt red shale literally "rattled" out of the trucks when tipped on a formation. Many of the tips had been smothered with soil during the war years to hide the glow that was emitted, these had purposely been set alight to render the unburnt clay, which was prevalent in the coal seams, to a more useful product. Nevertheless constant selection was necessary and tips in the Featherstone, Syndale and Bently areas were much used. Many a loaded truck burst into flames if the material became too hot and reacted to exposure through digging operations.
The make up of the waste is critical. High levels of sulphates are very bad news, in wet conditions the sulphates leech out of the fill and react with the road surfacing. Its much worse if the structure is concrete but bitumen roads can also heave up and cause potholes and other surface issues. Power station waste tends to contain sulphates and as I recall Calcium Sulphate was found to be major component of the spoil from the Selby coalfield. In the Teesside area this was a major problem in the 1970's when mine waste high in sulphates was used as the foundation for housing and roads. To this day you cannot get a mortgage on houses built in that era unless the foundation layer has been drilled into and tested.
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Re: NYCC to sue HE over A63

Post by Hdeng16 »

It really was a sight to behold before the works. Absolutely atrocious - the carriageway was split into 4 or 5 ‘lanes’ of tarmac, therefore 4 or 5 rows of potholes along the entire length, then on top of that, random large sunked sections every 200 yards.

For those who didn’t drive it, it really is quite hard to overdo quite how awful it was. It wasn’t just a bit of a rubbish job, it was unbelievably bad and I’m amazed at how quickly it fell to pieces.
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jgharston
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Re: NYCC to sue HE over A63

Post by jgharston »

Thorpe Park on the outskirts of Leeds by A1J46 had the same problem. It was like driving through a ploughed field. I was on site yesterday and they've got all the roads dug up being rebuilt/resurfaced.
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Re: NYCC to sue HE over A63

Post by tipsynurse »

Skanska have the contract for the roads around here. They have to be the least competent company I have ever seen. They resurfaced a square - bus companies told them the bus stops were too small - buses had to drive over the kerbing which cracked - council blamed the buses for not driving properly.

They were in the local paper because they are doing the fifth set of remedial work (paid for by the council) in two years.

In another scheme on my way to work they have closed off sections of new road that only opened a month ago to plane off a redo the surface because the had extended the Cambridge cycle kerb beyond a bus route junction, so you had to slow to a crawl to turn in.

I wouldn't trust them to resurface my driveway.
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