The long "road" to better roads

If you look at most roads around the country - excepting motorways, the condition is pretty sub-standard. Cycling on many local roads can be unerving when you spend more time watching the fractured edges of broken surfacing or trying to avoid 2 inch potholes than watching the other traffic.

There have been plenty of complaints in the papers about councils bemoaning the lack of funds to fix "potholes" but there is a obvious lack of leadership from the Department for Transport who are in a position to set the tone and legislation required to get the roads back to the correct standard.

In Japan, the roads in Osaka were immaculate. Even narrow side-roads looked brand new and despite cycling mostly on pavements, if you did need to go on the roads, it was never something to be dreaded. Japan can do it, why can't we?

There are a couple of issues at play here. There is the obvious concern about tight budgets. Despite what the media would have us believe, Central Government funding has been drying up in the UK for over a decade and since roads cost big money to resurface, it is easier to pay for things like Education and Welfare and hope that we will get another few years from the roads. One bad winter and Bang! the whole lot are instantly destroyed and there is still little money for repairs.

This however covers up an issue that seems much more sinister and destructive and something which the government can do and should do something about - the Utility Companies.

What do you think happens when someone like Virgin media move into an area to lay cables? Roads and pavements are dug up, cables are laid and then 'repairs' are made. Same for gas, electricity, water and everything else. These repairs, even when carried out correctly, drastically reduce the lifespan of the road surface. I can't find a reference but I read that it can be as drastic as reducing from > 60 years to 10 years since the joins between the repair and the good surface are never perfect enough to prevent ingress of water during the winter, which often expands, cracks and then defrosts. Anyone who has ever seen the people who make these repairs can understand that it is not exactly treated like surgery!

This leads to the classic Great British stand-off. The utility companies will insist on making repairs/upgrades/new installations and can pretty much do these at will to a road that might have been re-surfaced 3 months previously (it happened near Stroud despite the council asking in advance whether any works were due). The councils will bemoan the size of the problem and the fact that utility companies are making repairs that will effectively quadruple the cost of road repairs - excluding temporary repairs to potholes. Most repairs are not going to warrant a complete re-surface and even if they did, how much road would need re-surfacing for, e.g. a 50cmx50cm repair? The whole road for 100 metres either way?

There are a couple of solutions that councils could implement (but don't hold your breath). The first shorter term solution should charge utility companies either a retainer for, say, 5 years, where any subsequent damage/potholes are taken out of the retainer by the council or otherwise charging a surcharge for any works that are invasive (require road surface changes) at a high enough rate to make utility companies make more use of things like moles which can tunnel under a road.

The second and longer-term solution is to consider what the end-goal should be (something governments are not often keen to do) and then to start working on it. For instance, and I don't suggest this is necessarily viable, you could decide all services must be installed below pavements, which are much easier to repair with slabs - or at least the tarmac repairs are not subjected to heavy traffic and therefore all new roads must follow this in some way, perhaps with pre-installed ducts and draw-pits where there are houses so pavements do not always have to be re-dug. At the moment, someone digs it all up then fills it in, someone else digs it up and fills it in etc.. This would involve up-front money but not a great deal since most new services will be installed in ducts anyway so the extra cost of some more PP ducts paid for by the contractors or council would be much lower than the road repairs.

Anyway, whatever the government could decide, it is another problem that has been allowed to continue unbated for years and years - and this is unacceptable.