Went to Delft overnight Thursday, arrived back at Harwich on Tuesday morn.
It was only on Monday afternoon that I saw a pothole, on single track road that was probably private anyway, and realised it was the first I had seen in about 300 miles of driving around south Holland.
The roads are immaculate. Public sector deficits are not only measured in money. I wonder how many tens of billions in neglected maintenance our own crummy roads represent.
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...but there are windmills in Denmark.
Do you have the microfilm?
;-)
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I always found most of the French roads to be very nice to drive and cycle on, perfectly smooth.
One of the reasons I was told is that over in France they build most of their utility manholes or pipe service points off of the highway, this means any future digging doesn't interfere with the road surface.
Over here I'm sure we've seen a newly laid piece of tarmac ripped up to lay a pipe and then the repair disaggregates over time leaving a pothole.
Then there seems to be vast difference in the quality of the materials used on the roads, concrete lasts but is noisy on the motorways other tarmac types fall apart after only 6 months.
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>> Over here I'm sure we've seen a newly laid piece of tarmac ripped up to
>> lay a pipe and then the repair disaggregates over time leaving a pothole.
Completely agree, and it makes me mad. The vast (90%+) majority of potholes I see are not caused by worn out road surfaces, but by cracking, crumbling bodged "repairs" after the road surface has been dug up by a utility company to lay a pipe or cable. The bodgery performed by the electricity company's contractor locally after recent re-cabling project beggars belief. They have dug trenches along roads and pavements that run for hundreds of yards at a time, and then literally chucked tarmac in them, leaving it standing proud of the road by an inch in places. The edges are not sealed, and are already starting to break up. I suspect it will all be falling apart completely by the winter. Before this activity, the road surface was old, but perfectly acceptable, and would have been fine for years more.
I've also noticed that when roads are resurfaced, it really stands out to have a completely uniform road surface with no strips of odd coloured tarmac here and there covering trenches dug by utility companies.
I can't believe councils, cash strapped as they constantly claim to be, aren't seeing this golden opportunity to get roads resurfaced on someone else's money, and if they were clever with the rules, and forced the companies to use their own contractors, as happens in many other countries, they could actually charge it out above cost, and boost their coffers as well. You might also get the utility companies collaborating and sharing cost, reducing inconvenience and road closures. Only a few years ago, the same stretch of a major road was dug up twice in a year by two different utility companies, for scheduled work (rather than repairs). That wouldn't have happened if they'd had to pay to properly repair the damage they did.
The current situation allows private companies to dig up a road, repair it on the cheap, and then have the resulting disintegration become the taxpayer's problem. How is this acceptable?
Last edited by: DP on Fri 6 Jul 18 at 10:41
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My Dad (now retired) worked all his life for Thames Water at a high level but out in the field visiting and managing projects all over the SE (lots of stories about meeting famous people in their big gated houses in Surrey and military instillations while doing major water pipe replacement).
Anyhow, he always tells me that there are numerous regulations about the repair of roads surfaces after companies have dug them up, apparently they have a legal obligation to return them to a state that they were in before the work, they even are supposed to return 6 months after the work to inspect the repair to check for subsidence or deterioration.
Knowing this I've successfully managed to get two repairs near me that had subsided very badly re-repaired with a much better fill/fix and a properly sealed joint between the new and old tarmac.
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Same cant be said of Belgium in my experience.
Whilst travelling back to Brugges last October I hit several teeth rattlers even on their main motorway network.
Having said that I have just returned from another Munich trip and there has been some very obvious pot hole filling completed.
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In my town at least some of the many potholes can be attributed to poor workmanship by contractors resurfacing the roads.
Over the past two years many roads have been done using the tar and stone chips method (it can be very effective if done properly), but some of them developed sections where the new surface was quickly worn away.
To cap it all the main road through the town centre (about four-fifths of a mile long) was completely resurfaced just under a year ago. It subsequently developed worn patches over several sections.
As a result, in both the main road and the other roads involved, the poor quality work has had to be rectified (presumably at the contractors' own expense).
It certainly doesn't say much for the council's Technical Services department that its staff seemingly don't seem capable of overlooking such road works and ensuring that they are done properly in the first place.
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It certainly doesn't say much for the council's Technical Services department that its staff seemingly
>> don't seem capable of overlooking such road works and ensuring that they are done properly
>> in the first place.
Probably only a handful of people working there who know what to do checking roads etc.
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>>Probably only a handful of people working there who know what to do checking roads etc. >>
It's responsible for many, many hundreds of miles of roads over a large swathe of the North West coast, so as it's run in-house (after a period being operated by Capita Symonds) one would assume that the necessary skills and technical expertise are to hand as the ex-council staff resumed their original workplace.....
Last edited by: Stuartli on Sat 7 Jul 18 at 12:58
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one would assume that the necessary skills and technical expertise are to hand> as the ex-council staff resumed their original workplace.....
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Dangerous business that assuming.
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>>
>>
>> Probably only a handful of people working there who know what to do checking roads
>> etc.
>>
The Romans knew that the secret of building a road that would last hundreds of years lies in the grading of the sub-structure. Big rocks at the base, then layers of progressively smaller material.
Anyone who has ever laid a drive knows that the final surface is the least important part.
Digging a trench obviously entails careful layering and compaction afterwards to maintain the integrity of the road.
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True... but as I mentioned there is a legal obligation for the utility companies creating the hole to return it to state it was in before the work (a BS standard I think?).
The councils could save themselves money by pursuing the companies but obviously without the manpower they rely on the public to report the defects in the first place.
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One of the major problems with repairs is the layering and compacting of material that has been placed in the trench. I say trench because that is where the majority of repairs take place and they should be compacted, by of all things a 'Trench Wacker' at maximum of 225mm layers. This is rarely done due to cost pressures and the ignorance of the operator.
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See Zero's thread about the heatwave.
We now have a 200mm x 200mm hole in the tarmac on the drive. I can get a bucket of Tarmac from Screwfix but need a Tamper from somewhere...!
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build it up above the level of the drive, walk it down by foot. put some more over it, place a load of thin plywood over it, and then drive over it. repeat till tamped.
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>> need a Tamper from somewhere...!
>>
Fill an old can or plastic bucket about 6" across with mortar, and set a length of gas pipe etc in it.
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Your local hire centre will almost certainly have Wacker Plates.
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No potholes in Holland. - Runfer D'Hills
