CitroJim's AX, C3 Picasso, Cycling and Running Tales

[Zelandeth]

The other thing you've got to consider if you were doing it in smaller chunks is that everything is on a set date/time - so if you fall behind on one bit it would screw up the whole lot afterwards, which would then need to be updated. With associated admin costs, both in terms of someone needing to handle it at the end of the works provider, but also the fees from the Office of the Traffic Commissioner. Plus the added potential for an admin foul up. Just coning off a large section makes more sense.

It is far safer than having a bunch of separate sites - most accidents happen when something changes. Whether it be speed, lane position etc. Irrespective of whether that's slowing down for works or speeding up again afterwards. Annoying it may be, but from a pure risk perspective just keeping everyone in two lanes at 50 for five miles is safer than having two 1/4 mile work zones five miles apart.

That's what they generally due on the US Interstate - and it's kind of terrifying the way you see four lanes of traffic slamming on the anchors every few miles from 80+ to 45 as they merge down a lane or two with basically no prior signage.

Now, the fact that it takes about a decade and a half to replace a drain grating these days, that's another discussion entirely and not one I can help you with!

It might interest people to know that the big infrastructure providers are actually made aware when work is taking place on roads, and are encouraged to coordinate. Sadly while there is technically a mechanism that they can be fined for digging up the road two weeks after someone else was in there for routine works, they know full well that there's not an Authority in the country whose Street Occupations team has enough staff to keep up with the day job, much less chase things like that up. They generally did TRY at least where we were, not least because our main guy who handled that wasn't someone you wanted to annoy, and the companies generally knew that he could make their lives far more complicated than they could his. Openreach were the worst where we were though, they were a complete law unto themselves and couldn't coordinate with themselves never mind anyone else.

I wasn't actually IN the roads department, but I worked very closely with them on a lot of things, including trying to mitigate the impact of the aforementioned temporary traffic orders on public transport.

[CitroJim]

It should be compulsory for all drivers to spend a morning working roadside, a morning using a pushbike on the roads, and a few hours with a horse on the road

Amen to that Bobins... I totally agree. I've done that except the horse bit although riding a bike gives me a very good idea and observing how some drivers treat horse and their riders. I get it...

[mickthemaverick]

I'm in a different camp here. I agree with a morning's roadside work as being potentially useful but riding an untaxed anything on the road should be banned for me. If you want to use the road your transport should be safety tested and you pay for it as a tax against the cost of road maintenance !!
To me it is outrageous for a person running say a 2.7 C6 should pay £700+ and Mot fees while a horse drawn carriage can hold him up for ages in a 5 mile contraflow and not pay a penny!!!

[CitroJim]

while a horse drawn carriage can hold him up for ages in a 5 mile contraflow and not pay a penny!!!

Against that Mick, they keep many blacksmiths and wheelwrights in business... They don't come cheap

[mickthemaverick]

I don't know about Wheelwrights Jim, in fact I wouldn't know where to find one, but I think you'll find taxing horses to use the road would hardly affect blacksmith trade at all as the horsey people would still follow their passion and I suspect a very high percentage of blacksmith work comes from equestrian sport!!

[bobins]

Unless you start branding registration numbers on horses backsides, taxing horses ain't going to happen. As for horse drawn carriages, they make up a statistically inconsequential problem on our roads and just aren't worth the paperwork.
If you want to reduce delays on our roads, then you'd be much better off targeting bad or over-running roadworks, badly phased traffic lights, poor road designs and junctions, motorists who crash, sheer volume of traffic, etc, etc.
If you want better road surfaces i.e. less damaged, then ultimately...... that'll mean higher taxes for you and me as highways authorities and councils are incapable of functioning better or in any other way.

[mickthemaverick]

I think branding horses would not be required. Simply a tax disc on the nearside buckle of the bridle would be fine!!

In my opinion the increasing degradation of our roads in recent years is possibly a result of the increasing average weight of vehicles, mainly due to the electric vehicle batteries coming on stream. So how is it that the vehicles most likely to wear the roads pay less towards the upkeep of them?
Don't worry about answering that as I already know the answer but politics is a banned subject!!

[bobins]

I think there are numerous reasons for the roads being crap - average weight of the vehicles being one. Sheer volume of traffic, weather extremes, councils and highways authorities 'getting what they paid for', lousy materials, roads contractors not being overly fussed about the quality of their work are but a few.
I've not looked into it, but I do wonder if the materials they use have to be 'sub-par' for environmental reasons. i.e. they can't use the good stuff as it'll end up killing a couple more penguins or some such.

[Zelandeth]

Other one I reckon that should be part of the driving test is to spend a day behind the wheel of a large vehicle like a bus or an artic under normal road conditions. Just like putting them on a bike, it would be extremely eye opening to a lot of drivers I reckon.

Without getting too political, the ever increasing pressure on local authorities to do more with less every year plays a big part too. Bear in mind I'm going back to ~2010 here and an area where the roads were compared to here positively pristine. The situation we were in was that to get out network back to what was considered an "acceptable" standard would have required spending somewhere in the region of five times the entire repair and scheduled maintenance budgets every year for the next ten years. That's not to fix everything, that's just to get to the point where they're actually successfully treading water and keeping up with maintenance. Even then we were seeing wear accelerating massively due to higher traffic volumes and cars getting heavier. Of course once the surface of a road starts to get damaged that degradation accelerates nearly exponentially to the point of failure, so the further behind you, the mountain you need to climb to catch up gets not only taller but steeper. The ever increasing shift to stupidly stiff suspension and tyres which have about as much flex as wagon wheels really don't help matters either.

I don't imagine for a second that the story is any different elsewhere.

A lot of the responsibility falls on Central Government as that's where the mo eh ultimately comes from, rather than necessarily at the fault of the actual councils. Likewise almost impossible tendering requirements for anything over £30k which make is nigh on impossible to tender for a project, get it done, snagged, approved and paid for within the financial year as the tender process alone takes the best part of six months - or more if you're unlucky with how the full council sessions fall. Oh yeah, it being unheard of to ever get confirmed funding beyond the current financial year is also a big headache and responsible for a lot of the piecemeal nonsense you see. It's very difficult to do the whole "spend money to save money" thing when you've effectively got about a 2-3 month window to get your work done between awarding the tender and the weather closing in for winter.

Absurdly lacking funding means that you're basically stuck using the cheapest contractors and because you can't pay a fair wage your internal team are also paid peanuts - so you end up with the cheapest materials installed by someone who more often than not just couldn't care less.

As for environmental considerations making repairs less durable? I'm not sold on that. We did a lot of testing behind the scenes with different surfacing compounds and a lot the modern ones held up just as well if not better than the traditional ones. I think repairs not holding up as well is just down to sheer traffic volumes, the more extremes of weather we're seeing, with more than a small pinch of improper prep work during the repair thrown in for good measure.

Then again, some Authorities *are* just utterly and completely incompetent it seems. Sadly I live in one of them. They couldn't run a bath much less a transport network. Having spent nearly ten years in the sector makes seeing it all the *more* frustrating to see as an outsider, I can assure you!

I'll stop waffling about this now as I'm sure I've thoroughly bored the lot of you by now.

[mickthemaverick]

An interesting read Zel thanks for that. While reading, it came to me that if the motivation for road taxation was providing a decent road network rather than striving for the unreachable 'Net 0' maybe all vehicles should be levied a single rate based on vehicle kerbweight + anticipated average load. EG a rate of 50p per 5kg across the range which would result in a levy of £100 per annum per 1 tonne vehicle plus average load supplemeht of say £20 per seat. Thus he who drives a pony and trap would have a very low rate compared to a driver of an electric 7 seat SUV. In other words some form of correlation between the amount you pay and the amount you wear the roads!!

[myglaren]

Aren't they introducing a form of that for EVs, based on annual distance covered between MOTs.

[bobins]

Several years ago I looked at one of the councils (can't remember which one, unfortunately) to look at what percentage of their budget was spent on highways. Whatever the figure was, it was absolutely utterly ridiculously dwarfed by their spend on social care and care for the elderly.

[mickthemaverick]

Quite ironic that bobins, considering it is probably the elderly who suffer the most from spine jarring when running over potholes!!

[myglaren]

I have been using the bus quite a bit lately as I am too lazy to go to my son's for my car, just seems too much like hard work.
We don't have that many potholes here, the roads are pretty decent, but the speed bumps and the bus suspension are not particularly compatible and there are thousands of speed bumps.

[bobins]

Higher taxes for the wealthy elderly to help pay for the pot hole repairs to help reduce their back injuries, Mick. It's a win-win situation... what's not to like ?