Fill that hole: Report pothole hazards on your routes - fix potholes

Exactly, the British paper industry just generates profits for people who are already rich and requires vast amounts of trees, evergreens, which massively reduce biodiversity by blocking out all the light to the forest floor. The only good thing you could say about it is that it is more sustainable and better managed than paper industries elsewhere, but that's not saying much.

Back on topic, this blog is full of councillors pointing at potholes and highly recommended:
http://glumcouncillors.tumblr.com

fill in the holes with melted down unipacks?

You have beautifully pointed out the floor in my plan.. It would take a lot of paint.... I.E a lot of cash as well..

What are your grounds for saying this?

How is it damage?

I should send the council a bill for all the fat spots on my wheels..

Why? Do you get free school meals? Just stop dribbling.

I hate those kind opf bikes that Senor Bear posted, I agree with skully, that they are trash to my eyes. I'd rather be riding a 531 frame, so much history and sexiness that thee kids dont know about.

What are your grounds for saying this?

Oh brave.... :)

If it's any consolation to the London crowd, the potholes up here in Glasgow look like that bit in the last ever episode of Buffy, when Sunnydale collapses into hell. I've managed to not hit one yet, but looking out for them is dangerous in itself, since it distracts from watching the traffic, lights etc.

I really, really like this idea of highlighting them with bright paint - I'll suggest it on the Glasgow forum, and since I know some graffiti artists up here, I might be able to borrow the paint from them. Nice.

From the £100 million announced for filling potholes in England, there's a corresponding £10 million for fixing them in Scotland, though I don't think that's going to go very far...

was up in glasgow on the weekend, and can say yes, even for cars & vans they are lethal. there are some holes that are so deep/ sheer edges they would actually write off a car in one go at less than 30mph, seriously.

as for repairs, what they need to do is in oct/nov/dec before first hard frost sets in they go round with a tar wagon and fill the cracks up/ edges of crap road repairs BEFORE they get bad, costing far far less in the long run. But I guess teh excuse is - we don't have it in teh budget at this stage of the year, a 'clean up' fund *will *be issued in 6months to help us do it without eating from our budget' etc etc.

chancellor promised to spend £100 million this year repairing our roads in the budget.. maybe he should get the utility companies to pay for it, they take enough money off us already and wreck our roads in the process.. anyway rant over saw this, and thought britain is defo going to pot(hole)

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At present I'm searching out every pothole I can find as training for the Tour of Flanders this weekend.

spray paint great idea

+1 on the utility companies, going to make a broad sweaping statement here, hold on....

MOST potholes and defects in the road are down to utility companies making quick/ unproper repairs on/in the roads.

mostly IMO down to them not 'tarring' the edges of a road repair/patch/hole fill. So consequently the rain & ice get in the cut crack between the old & new tarmac and bust it apart.

I think its germany, switserland and probably austria that have clauses to all road repairs along the lines of.... New roads CANNOT be dug up for a period of 2years after being laid, if they do dig up a freshly laid surface they get fined massively (painful amounts of £££). If a road is repaired badly (following utility works) and a defect appears on the road because of said repair, they get fined massively and then made to put it right as well.

Just a thought, why do we not have clauses like this in the UK?

Can remember reading LAST YEAR so before this winter did in the roads that just for Scotland the cost of overhauling the underinvestment in the road infrastructure/bad repairs over the last 10 years stood at over a billion. £10 mill is the equivalent of a doctor giving someone a one off acupuncture session to fix a broken spine... bloody dangerous state and don't see it being any different down here.

BrickMan, that would be perfect.

I have a feeling that the situation with roads being dug up all the time started when the Conservatives gave the right to (privatised) utility companies to dig up any road they wanted at any time; which is why roads can be dug up several times in quick succession by different companies. It's about putting private profit before anything else; roads are a shared resource, collectively owned, but that notion - of society, in essence - was one deplored by the right wing Tories and their successors, the Blairite Labour government.

There doesn't appear to be any continuity or communication regarding road works. I've seen a whole stretch of road immaculately re-laid only to be dug up two weeks later.

Potholes.

The desultory patching up of some of the serious 'holes' I encounter at critical pinch points on my journey must have been done for free .

what I don't get is, when they patch a hole, or just fail at covering over a utility hole, the tarmac they use is expensive, the tar they should be using is cheaper, and the labour (by comparison) even cheaper again. So where has it gone wrong?

Also with the communication, it should be an easy fix to get something in place, but like the hopeless tax system in this country, its as if they can't be bothered.

There doesn't appear to be any continuity or communication regarding road works. I've seen a whole stretch of road immaculately re-laid only to be dug up two weeks later.

That's exactly the problem; there was no requirement for companies to consult or co-ordinate, they could simply dig the road up whenever they liked. A public road, owned by the public, but no public body had the ability to stop private companies working on them.

You need to apply for and gain permission to dig up the road though- presumably from the local council?

As I understand it, and I may be wrong and it may have changed since, but for a long time, no, the companies did not have to apply for permission; which is why councils could not co-ordinate work and why newly resurfaced roads would be dug up again within weeks. I know it sounds beyond belief. Those companies did have a legal obligation to return the road to the condition it was in before but when I discussed this point with my brother, who is a civil engineer for Manchester Council, he just replied with a telling look.

Not one of my usual sources but a brief overview here

Well, we (fairly) often have to get the road dug up to install fibre optic cable, and it takes three and a half months (on average) as we have to get all sorts of permissions to do so.

I suspect the rules have been tightened a little since the original free for all but since there are over 100 companies allowed to dig up roads (in London), even if each one has to wait 3 months, that is still a lot of potential digging.

Just a thought, why do we not have clauses like this in the UK?

I have a feeling that the situation with roads being dug up all the time started when the Conservatives gave the right to (privatised) utility companies to dig up any road they wanted at any time; which is why roads can be dug up several times in quick succession by different companies. It's about putting private profit before anything else; roads are a shared resource, collectively owned, but that notion - of society, in essence - was one deplored by the right wing Tories and their successors, the Blairite Labour government.

Will is correct. The situation is still a shambles.

i can remember all the new docklands roads being covered in good quality brick paviours back in the 80s.. it seemed very sensible, partly because they (i think it was LDDC) recognised that future infrastructure changes were inevitable. also across the continent local councils investing in cobbles to the city centres. it looks good, it lasts and easier to maintain for consistency.

london will always be plagued with roadworks, mostly because the utilities are endlessly problematic, old and high maintenance.. a couple of harsh winters have i think revealed how cost cutting proves dangerous and expensive for us.. the heavier the traffic the faster these roads deteriorate..

being a cynic though suspect that any surcharge to utilities will cost us more through billing..
also see you on the cobbles this Saturday Brave..

So.. Are we a go on the yellow spray paint?

almac68.. I'm only doing the 140km route but if you see a skinnny guy in bright orange VC Elan kit say hi (looks like Euskaltel-Euskadi)