I hit a pothole and popped my tyre and damaged my alloy wheel this year too. I didn’t end up claiming it back either as the council process is ridiculous. It’s made me a pretty nervous driver now, especially in the rain. Just another sign of our crumbling and broken country.
I spoke to a friend of mine who works at the local council highways department a few months back. Apparently they have budget to sort them out but they don’t have enough people. And why is that? Well turns out 80% of the labour they had was from Europe and went back home due to Brexit. And no one leaves school wanting to fix roads.
I used to use my gopro as a film camera in case I got hit by a car, I now mount it on my fork, taking a succession of still images of the road so I have evidence if I hit a pothole – and if I see any I submit them online at https://www.fillthathole.org.uk/ before I hit them, Edinburgh council will not – or at least not easily – give compensation if the pothole hasn’t been reported.
>What do potholes tell us? “That you can’t have high-quality services, including basic ones, like street provision, in an environment where the tax burden isn’t sufficient to fund the public services that, broadly, people want,” says Travers. “I think they are a very physical representation of a hole in the political system – that’s as far as I can go, in terms of poetry.”
Basically bang on. The political/economic system is broken to the extent that the state can no longer effectively provide basic services. It’s possible that the road network / transport system we built in the 20th century is fundamentally unsustainable no matter what, but it’s certainly unsustainable under the current system because we seem to be unable to fund even just the maintenance.
>The answer, he says, is a national resurfacing programme, plus £3bn a year: “You need a proper long-term plan, like in other countries.”
A proper long-term plan doesn’t treat the symptom, it addresses the root cause – reduce the weight of cars, reduce the number of cars, return long distance high-volume haulage to the railways, use more, lighter, vehicles for the final stage of distribution from local rail hubs – because road wear goes up by weight to the fourth power law, two trips in a vehicle half the weight does 8x less damage to the road than a single trip in a heavy vehicle.
>In 2020, to mark his own war against potholes and to show the government he meant business, Morrell drove a tank to parliament.
There is a certain irony in protesting potholes by driving an extremely large, heavy vehicle around.
There’s a really cool shared path through the middle of the forest where I live. They basically poured concrete over old train tracks. I use it several times a week to commute to a town nearby. It didn’t have any works done since the 80s and still quite a smooth ride for my Dutch grandpa-style bike.
It’s amazing how cheap cycling infrastructure is compared to constantly repairing the roads for cars yet UK has so little of it.
I guess SUVs and parking on roads don’t help either.
Council planning departments hand out planning like confetti with no thought of the extra toll on roads, utilities digging up and not resurfacing correctly, these are major factors and also weather.
Councils of Britain! Please stop prioritising car infrastructure that you cannot afford to maintain. Build some fucking bike lanes and your pothole problems will decrease drastically.
Cars are heavy and roads are expensive. Bikes are light and the infra is cheap. Guess which one rarely requires pothole fixing?
I just spent two weeks cycling all over Holland and there wasn’t a single pothole.
It’s a choice.
Could introduce a new tax on all on-road motor vehicles scaled based on the weight of the vehicle, with the funds being ringfenced to go to local authorities for road repairs. Its big heavy cars, vans, and lorries which are the cause of this problem, so get their users to pay for it.
Just been driving in northern Spain. 100s of Miles of good roads even in rural areas, viaducts, tunnels all spotless, well lit and not a single closure or diversion or traffic jam. Come back to London and the drive from Stansted was like through a 3rd world country. It’s not just the state of the road surface either, cats eyes missing, no lights, worn markings, signs hidden behind bushes… the entire system is yet another underfunded public service.
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I hit a pothole and popped my tyre and damaged my alloy wheel this year too. I didn’t end up claiming it back either as the council process is ridiculous. It’s made me a pretty nervous driver now, especially in the rain. Just another sign of our crumbling and broken country.
I spoke to a friend of mine who works at the local council highways department a few months back. Apparently they have budget to sort them out but they don’t have enough people. And why is that? Well turns out 80% of the labour they had was from Europe and went back home due to Brexit. And no one leaves school wanting to fix roads.
I used to use my gopro as a film camera in case I got hit by a car, I now mount it on my fork, taking a succession of still images of the road so I have evidence if I hit a pothole – and if I see any I submit them online at https://www.fillthathole.org.uk/ before I hit them, Edinburgh council will not – or at least not easily – give compensation if the pothole hasn’t been reported.
>What do potholes tell us? “That you can’t have high-quality services, including basic ones, like street provision, in an environment where the tax burden isn’t sufficient to fund the public services that, broadly, people want,” says Travers. “I think they are a very physical representation of a hole in the political system – that’s as far as I can go, in terms of poetry.”
Basically bang on. The political/economic system is broken to the extent that the state can no longer effectively provide basic services. It’s possible that the road network / transport system we built in the 20th century is fundamentally unsustainable no matter what, but it’s certainly unsustainable under the current system because we seem to be unable to fund even just the maintenance.
>The answer, he says, is a national resurfacing programme, plus £3bn a year: “You need a proper long-term plan, like in other countries.”
A proper long-term plan doesn’t treat the symptom, it addresses the root cause – reduce the weight of cars, reduce the number of cars, return long distance high-volume haulage to the railways, use more, lighter, vehicles for the final stage of distribution from local rail hubs – because road wear goes up by weight to the fourth power law, two trips in a vehicle half the weight does 8x less damage to the road than a single trip in a heavy vehicle.
Remember, in the long term, [131. ….Continued widespread private vehicle ownership does not appear to be compatible with significant decarbonisation](https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmsctech/1454/145408.htm).
>In 2020, to mark his own war against potholes and to show the government he meant business, Morrell drove a tank to parliament.
There is a certain irony in protesting potholes by driving an extremely large, heavy vehicle around.
There’s a really cool shared path through the middle of the forest where I live. They basically poured concrete over old train tracks. I use it several times a week to commute to a town nearby. It didn’t have any works done since the 80s and still quite a smooth ride for my Dutch grandpa-style bike.
It’s amazing how cheap cycling infrastructure is compared to constantly repairing the roads for cars yet UK has so little of it.
I guess SUVs and parking on roads don’t help either.
Council planning departments hand out planning like confetti with no thought of the extra toll on roads, utilities digging up and not resurfacing correctly, these are major factors and also weather.
Councils of Britain! Please stop prioritising car infrastructure that you cannot afford to maintain. Build some fucking bike lanes and your pothole problems will decrease drastically.
Cars are heavy and roads are expensive. Bikes are light and the infra is cheap. Guess which one rarely requires pothole fixing?
I just spent two weeks cycling all over Holland and there wasn’t a single pothole.
It’s a choice.
Could introduce a new tax on all on-road motor vehicles scaled based on the weight of the vehicle, with the funds being ringfenced to go to local authorities for road repairs. Its big heavy cars, vans, and lorries which are the cause of this problem, so get their users to pay for it.
Just been driving in northern Spain. 100s of Miles of good roads even in rural areas, viaducts, tunnels all spotless, well lit and not a single closure or diversion or traffic jam. Come back to London and the drive from Stansted was like through a 3rd world country. It’s not just the state of the road surface either, cats eyes missing, no lights, worn markings, signs hidden behind bushes… the entire system is yet another underfunded public service.