Yellow highlights and construction work

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Wed 29 Mar 2023 09:48
Yellow highlights and construction work - ThomW

Does anyone know if there is a time limit between when a 'fault' (pothole, pavement collapsing etc) is highlighted by the council on the roads and when the work has to be carried out?

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Wed 29 Mar 2023 12:45
Yellow highlights and construction work - Crickleymal

No but round here (Gloucestershire) it's common for the painted circles to be erased by traffic before the work gets done. Although I have to say they are getting quicker but the repairs that they do don't last very long.

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Wed 29 Mar 2023 15:11
Yellow highlights and construction work - Engineer Andy

Does anyone know if there is a time limit between when a 'fault' (pothole, pavement collapsing etc) is highlighted by the council on the roads and when the work has to be carried out?

It really depends on how serious the pothole is (size, especially depth as long as its at least 0.5m wide) and the type (how busy and fast [speed limit] it is and if its a bus or trunk route) of road its on.

A recent pothole around the pre-Christmas snow was fixed in 24hrs in my area because it was on a main road, others on side roads can easily take a week or longer.

My experience is based on Hertfordshire county council.

Always a good idea on fault reporting services to be as detailed and accurate as you can about faults - recent photos and accurate locations (including whether its in the direct path of vehicle wheels and whether it causes vehicles to swerve out of the way) are very good to help them prioritise work, which I'm afraid to say is because there's a huge backlog.

Side streets rarely get much priotity, and also get the type of 'repair' that doesn't last long either.

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Wed 29 Mar 2023 16:41
Yellow highlights and construction work - Xileno

"and also get the type of 'repair' that doesn't last long either."

I know exactly what you mean. I've mentioned before in a thread that at the end of this street there are bad potholes just by the entrance to the primary school. The pattern is tediously predicable:

Someone complains ;-)

A pickup arrives with a load of cold-set tarmac and it gets thumped in the holes.

It looks fine until the next rain storm and then it washes out.

Someone complains again...

On the last time I saw the man filling the holes I was tempted to say why not do the job properly but am sensible enough to realise it won't be his fault, he's just sent out to do what he's instructed to do. Besides he was a big bloke.

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Wed 29 Mar 2023 17:52
Yellow highlights and construction work - Andrew-T

"and also get the type of 'repair' that doesn't last long either."

I know exactly what you mean. I've mentioned before in a thread that at the end of this street there are bad potholes just by the entrance to the primary school. The pattern is tediously predicable.

Just outside the (shared) entrance to our property there were a couple of rough worn patches until a year or two ago. We had complained to the council that the official map showed the damage was on the public road, without success. I tried again - second time lucky, because I think it happened to coincide with another job nearby. Anyhow, the surface was levelled in the usual way, prompting a comment from the lad next door 'that won't last a week'. Two years later it is still there, apparently unchanged. Admittedly it doesn't carry heavy traffic, but it has to be rated a success.

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Wed 29 Mar 2023 16:50
Yellow highlights and construction work - sammy1

The local councils throw copious amounts of salt on their main highways which is guaranteed to cause problems with the roads. Most of the grit just gets blown or washed into the gutters and so requires gritting every night.

My local council or perhaps its contractors will repair the marked pothole but ignore the one developing since the guy with the paint went out, and so it goes on keeping the workforce gainfully employed.

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Wed 29 Mar 2023 18:00
Yellow highlights and construction work - Crickleymal

My local council or perhaps its contractors will repair the marked pothole but ignore the one developing since the guy with the paint went out, and so it goes on keeping the workforce gainfully employed.

Oh yes definitely. I complained to the council about this. They told me that they wish they could be proactive about these things but weren't allowed to be. A huge load of BS in my opinion.

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Thu 30 Mar 2023 13:34
Yellow highlights and construction work - Engineer Andy

My local council or perhaps its contractors will repair the marked pothole but ignore the one developing since the guy with the paint went out, and so it goes on keeping the workforce gainfully employed.

Oh yes definitely. I complained to the council about this. They told me that they wish they could be proactive about these things but weren't allowed to be. A huge load of BS in my opinion.

Indeed - a local bad pothole in my town on a well used road adjacent to the biggest school had to be reported about 8 times (you have to report it on their 'map' in slightly different locations to get the report to upload at all) before the county council's contractor finally came out and repaired it.

Other repairs have been just on a pothole and they leave the very cracked / quickly deteriorating road next to it alone, meaning , yes, you've guessed it, a pothole quickly opens up right next to the 'repaired' one and the whole process starts again.

To me, this smacks of incompetence from the council's side for not doing a full repair over the entire area, saving them a LOT of money because less callouts/admin and a better, longer-lasting surface, but also such things are a great money-making wheeze for the contractor, because every report and thus 'repair' gets paid separately.

The same goes for road signs - if you 'do the right thing' and report (say) a sign's light not working and the sign itself being wonky, they'll only do the item to which the 'fault type' was IDed as, even though you've described two faults. You HAVE to make two separate fault reports, and thus it gets two separate crew call out charges, even though most of the time, only one crew does the work. Ker-ching!

Back to the pothole 'repairs', those 'spray-on' (small grit type) repairs are even worse than the cold tar, which at least has some substance to it. The spray type often gets washed. ground away within a week or so.

One of the main problems is that rarely - even with hot tar and motorised roller repairs - does the underlying problem get fixed, i.e. the subsurface breaking up and/or a broken or sunken pipe or conduit below. This is what is now happening along another well used (but very old) road in my town.

You can see the line down the road where the subsurface has failed likely due to the presence of a sewer, water or gas main below. Most 'repairs have lasted best part of 2 weeks, some only a few days because the surrounding surface is deteriorating so quickly. Not helped by it being both a bus route and a local rat-run / cut through from ones side of the town to the other to avoid the town centre and juntions around the Tesco supermarket and dual carriageway bypass.

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Thu 30 Mar 2023 17:12
Yellow highlights and construction work - sammy1

I reported to our local council that a road drain overflowing with sewerage for days on end. Their reply was it is not their responsibility even through was a public health matter and I should contact the waterboard. They are in direct contact with the water people but just could not be bothered. My experience of our local council is that they are over maned and generally lazy and I wonder just what value for money we are getting from some of the councillors paid to represent us

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Thu 30 Mar 2023 19:31
Yellow highlights and construction work - Xileno

There has to be a better material for repairing these potholes - assuming a proper job of resurfacing is off the cards. I've often thought about heated liquid rubber that solidifies when cooled.

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Fri 31 Mar 2023 00:20
Yellow highlights and construction work - Crickleymal

There has to be a better material for repairing these potholes - assuming a proper job of resurfacing is off the cards. I've often thought about heated liquid rubber that solidifies when cooled.

In days of yore the patches put in potholes used to be sealed with tar around the edges which, I presume, stopped water ingress and smoothed the edge. Nowadays they just plonk the tarmac in, go over it once with a roller or vibrating plate and scoot off. There's one pothole near me that is repaired every 6 months or so. Obviously there's an underlying cause but nobody seems to be prepared to investigate.

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Fri 31 Mar 2023 14:29
Yellow highlights and construction work - Engineer Andy

There has to be a better material for repairing these potholes - assuming a proper job of resurfacing is off the cards. I've often thought about heated liquid rubber that solidifies when cooled.

In days of yore the patches put in potholes used to be sealed with tar around the edges which, I presume, stopped water ingress and smoothed the edge. Nowadays they just plonk the tarmac in, go over it once with a roller or vibrating plate and scoot off. There's one pothole near me that is repaired every 6 months or so. Obviously there's an underlying cause but nobody seems to be prepared to investigate.

Apparently the current thinking is that the tar round the edges can make walking, driving or cycling over it very slippery, especially in the wet, hence why most repairs of that nature are limited in use.

The problem with the other types are that they don't properly seal at the edges, and thus damage occurs again at that weak point, or the repair crew uses a 'humped' repair, slighly raised and over the edge, which means the repaired bit of road or path isn't level with the rest of the surface and thus will not be good (maybe in some circumstance not safe) and will wear more quickly because it protrudes.

Unfortunately there's little proper surveying (by actual professionals) or planning to diagnose the causes of problems (especially repeat ones) and carry out long term fixes, which in the end will save money and cause less delays and knock-on costs to motorists.

Everything appears to be short-term sticking plasters, except where local councillors get 'favours' done to spend £££ just in their area or one they are looking to expand their voter base. Seen that in my area with a half mile stretch of main road completely resurfaced when only about 50m needed work.

All the while, other areas are left to deteriorate to such an extent that they are dangerous, especially to pedal and motor cyclists, not helped by a lack of road sweeping, which actively encourages road deterioration via a grinding effect when people drive over debris (including stones from breaking up roadways).

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Fri 31 Mar 2023 12:24
Yellow highlights and construction work - galileo

There has to be a better material for repairing these potholes - assuming a proper job of resurfacing is off the cards. I've often thought about heated liquid rubber that solidifies when cooled.

The problem with rubber is that is slippery when wet - OK if the thing it is in contact with is tarmac or concrete, but rubber tyres or rubber-soled shoes give little more grip than ice on wet rubber.

Perhaps not a problem for a small pothole but a large one could be so for cyclists.

Edited by galileo on 31/03/2023 at 12:26

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Fri 31 Mar 2023 16:52
Yellow highlights and construction work - Xileno

We've had heavy rain the last 48 hours (on and off) and the 'repair' that was done a few weeks ago has mostly washed away again. All the gravel has accumulated near a drain as well, I expect next there will be a complaint that someone's drain has blocked.

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Sat 1 Apr 2023 10:57
Yellow highlights and construction work - Engineer Andy

We've had heavy rain the last 48 hours (on and off) and the 'repair' that was done a few weeks ago has mostly washed away again. All the gravel has accumulated near a drain as well, I expect next there will be a complaint that someone's drain has blocked.

Yep - and that's also a symptom of general road (re)surfacing done on the cheap - one local road has been 're' surfaced a couple of years or so ago with a similar 'spray-on' sticky gravel type surface, where areas away from the used road accumulate all the bits, that then either get washed down the drains in heavy rain or grind the surface down when driven over.

The council just spent a fortune on completely replacing both the underground drain pipes (at least 0.5m diameter) and gulleys themselves because they were partially blocked with the grit as well as the (nowadays) usual fatberg stuff we here about in the media. They were there digging away etc for best part of two weeks - must've cost them several tens if not hundreds of thousands of £ - and that road surface is still there.

Of course, the local council rarely, if ever, sweeps the roads, and mostly after locals complain in a public setting like a town meeting or via the local rag.

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Sat 1 Apr 2023 11:17
Yellow highlights and construction work - Crickleymal

It's not just recently. I think it was 1976, our council resurfaced one road running uphill from the main road by coating it with tar and chucking pea gravel at it. Of course, being a really hot summer, the tar melted and several tons of gravel shifted down the road collecting in drifts at the bottom.

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