Potholes and Road Maintenance

[BobA]

I'm sitting in my kitchen, watching East Sussex Highways, do some of their finest work, but this has prompted a question, as I have NO knowledge of highway maintenance.

Bear in mind, it is absolutely pi$$ing down here at the moment!!!!

09:10 Lorry pulls up, with a couple of high-viz warriors

09:12 Parks on my neigbours verge, and sticks two signs out

09:14 Sweeps rainwater out of pothole, plonks a pile of bitumen in there.

09:16 Goes over bitumen pile with a vibrating plate

09:17 They're back in the lorry, and moving 30 metres to the next pothole


Now I do appreciate their efforts to save our lives and shock absorbers, but DO THESE KIND OF 7 MINUTE REPAIRS WORK, OR LAST??????????
(how can the new bitumen knit into the existing on a soaking cold road??)

Is it just a temporary repair, and is it cost-effective?



Your thoughts?

[Lutin]

I'm not entirely sure that would be a lasting repair, BUT they are seen to be doing something.

Which is, apparently, what people want these days.





Please ignore at your leisure.

[Yeti]

Complete waste of time but just to stop pedestrians cyclists and motocyclists getting in a claim! I suspect it's part of trying to keep money for maintenance contracts. Fill the holes in and as long as people only complain about the state of the roads but don't actually claim for damages by them, the brown envelopes keep doing the rounds! Judging by the towns and Cities I have lived in the road needs to be at least 80% patchwork quilt before it gets a scim over.

If you look around at the potholes you can see where they have scraped the surface off when re-surfacing and in most cases just put down a 10-20mm layer of tarmac! That is not a road! that is a bodge! Coming back to bite them now though after the ice has got in between it. I suspect highways agencies are also going to finally have a look at doing something other than throwing chippings down onto soft tarmac in the summer and calling that re-surfacing. The ice has blown nearly all of that around here back out of the road!

I've been watching the A1 widening roadworks up here recently (only in passing I'm not that sad!) and it strikes me that although it is expected to take until 2012, I suspect it will remain roadworks for the duration of it life! I am not an highways engineer but watching them take the levels down and grade it back up, they may as well have just turfed it! It is pathetic how badly our roads are built and then badly maintained. Go and travel to other countries and when they are building a new road you can't even see the plant machinery they take it down that far to re-grade. And not just in clay or sandy stuff. The real thorn in the side is when you exit their roadworks and see the nice sign with the cute little circle of stars letting you know it is your money helping to pay for it when uk roads are like washboards and cullenders!

All companies that build or dig up roads should be held accountable for their work for a long time. That way we might get a little more than a man and a whacker plate.

ahhh feel better now!

[Boris]

Well in the long and distant past when I was an apprentice and dug holes for a living BitMac (Bitumen TarMac mix) was the standard TEMPORARY material when making good.

It cold cured so was easy to use without the expensive machines but never really got hard. It was really just a stopgap till the surface was given a permanent repair.

As it never really sets and remains somewhat fluid vehicles will push it around so it's not suitable where heavy goods vehicles and buses are used.

But it is quick and cheap to lay

[Paul-S]

There was a recent article on local Granada reports ITV1 - In Liverpool they have invested in a pothole repair machine which looks like a road sweeper / drain cleaner at first

They vacuum all the crap out of the hole / heat and bitumen is then applied and then stones / tarmac pumped to fill the hole - all using the multi nozzle attachment that looks like a drain cleaner

Then the repair is manually whacked by the high-viz warrior and a whacker / roller

All done in superfast time

[Whealie]

In terms of the road - a waste of time. In terms of cost-effective hugely.

I remember an insurance lawyers telling me once:

"There's a pot hole in Liverpool they call 'The End of the Rainbow' and whole families have fallen in it looking for a pot of gold".

[icenian]

Goes over bitumen pile with a vibrating plate

a vibrating plate? round here the usual method seems to be to stamp on it with a boot

I s**t thee not...

[rgarrioch]

I suspect it will remain roadworks for the duration of its life!

I'm in your court Yeti.

This could easily lead to a larger discussion on falling standards etc., a generic problem in construction, IMO; site management ignoring good practice & getting away with doing as little as possible with the cheapest materials available; new workers never get told / taught the 'right' way to do things, & the finished article really isn't (finished). It's a constant battle. The larger Civils jobs seem a lot better for maintaining quality procedures.
The basic overpatch might stay in shape until the next cold spell, the damage will spread a little more, be patched again, fail again, spread again and on and on and on... Frustrating, isn't it? (both the shoddy work and my reply!)

[Whealie]

Bob,

you may remember I started an almost identical thread (except I was good enough/boring enough to take photos) a while back.

I complained to the council. They sent another man in hi viz jacket to take a look, rejected my complaint (so no compensation issues) and promptly resurfaced the road.

So I have a lovely bit of tarmac outside my house and garage now.

[StumpyFingers]

There was a pot hole on the corner of Gypsy hill and every time they did the bitumen Filling it took 30 minutes for the bus tires to remove it and the pot hole to return. It took 2 years before they decided to close the road for 8 hours and repair the road properly.