As this jolly piece from the BBC points out, it's the weather that's mostly the cause of the potholes.
There is an interesting comment on the BBC site from a reader:
If the "compo culture" disappeared, would councils spend this extra £53m on fixing potholes? Why on earth do we allow people to sue councils and public services anyway?OK. Whilst we don't want people suing the councils left right and centre the thought of not being able to take legal action against a negligent council is more terrifying, so I don't think there's any chance of making progress there.
Yet there is a point here - and it's about unintended consequences.
Cheshire East council has a pothole policy which says that any hole larger than 2cm in depth on the road (1cm on the pavement) will be fixed within 24 hours of being reported. As well as relying on reports from the public* (I make it my business to report every pothole I find) the council also sends engineers out on major routes to locate surface defects. This policy is to protect individuals (cyclists and pedestrians are especially vulunrable) and to reduce the amount of claims we receive about damaged cars.**
This all seems good so far, and I'm sure that there's not many people who disagree with this (unless your some crackpot that wants a 10 minute pothole rapid response team).
This policy was intended to make roads safer - but it actually has the opposite effect.
Repairing potholes piecemeal is not cost effective. They are likely to reappear in the same place in the near future. This is because repairs are never as good anyway, and sometimes have to be made in non-ideal weather conditions. The best thing to do is resurface the whole road and create a clean, water tight seal over the carriageway.
But this can't be done in 24 hours, so we do an expensive quick fix.
This means that there is less money available for resurfacing. So more potholes appear, which have to be fixed, which means there is less money for resurfacing, which means more potholes....
You get the gist. We're firefighting. A policy that was intended to improve the quality of our roads has actually made them worse.
There must be a better way to do this. Can we have a longer turnaround and fix the holes better? How do we deal with the safety issues? Can we make it cheaper?
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* Use the reporting tool on the CE website. It's really rather good.
** Most of which I understand are successfully defended because we have a good policy towards defects which is rigorously implemented. We don't have to ensure the road surface is 100% perfect because that's obviously not possible. 24 hours is a very respectable turnaround.
2 comments:
As per usual the reactionary knee jerk BBC have your say crowd is utterly clueless, ill informed, unwashed and unable to research the matter.
The relevant legislation is the Highways Act 1980, not the newest piece of legislation on the books by a long shot.
It contains provision that at section 41 the relevant highway authority must maintain the the highway. Only recently has this been broadened to include snow and ice.
It also provides a special catch all get out defence to the relevant authority under section 58 which provides that in the case of someone tripping and suffering an injury it is a defence for the authority to show that it had taken such care as was reasonable in all the circumstances to make sure the highway was not dangerous.
generally this involves showing that the authority will repair a defect quickly if reported and by having a sensible system of inspection, 6 months for a minor road and more often in a prestige highstreet etc etc.
It is entirely acceptable for the tax payer to expect that holes in the road and highway be filled in so as they do not have to lay out in costs associated with an injury or in damage sustained to their car.
It is also reasonable for the tax payer to expect that a rolling program on road upgrades is done rather than waiting for a road to look like bubble wrap before anything is done.
Where has the CE website gone.
http://www.cheshireeast.co.uk
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