Can we talk about potholes please? Why are there so many?

[Irememberwhenitwasallfieldsroundhere]

Motorways seem to be reasonably well maintained but I recently drove from London to Oxford and the state of the roads is a disgrace.

Does anyone know why? Are councils or the highways agency not responsible for repairing the roads?

It's really shocking - my Waze tells me about a pothole every 10 minutes it seems.

Also, is there anything anyone can do about it? If enough people complain will councils fix the roads?

That’s really interesting

Perhaps it would be better to look at the causes and address those, rather than just accept ever rising numbers, currently 1 in 5 children in England have SENDS

Germany and France have far far lower number of children with SENDs... some 3x less.
Appreciate countries have different definitions of SENDs but its hardly as if UK children are out shinning their European counterparts is it?

Why are we so "special"

Address this and we'll have a load of money for other things.

I have some ideas but will be called all the names under the sun if I say them here. So while it’s an urgent conversation, it’ll never happen.

Well, it needs to be addressed and people need to start to speak up.... its utterly ridiculous atm, its not just the cost of the SENDs its the benefits having these diagnosis open up.

Its completely unaffordable.

Imho, much of it is poor parenting.

Pennies in council tax?! We're Band B and our CT is way more than half of our mortgage - and it's just been announced that the council are putting it up by another 9%.

You may be fortunate enough that it does just seem like pennies to you; but it's a massive chunk of many families' monthly outgoings.

Hmmm I wouldn’t say ‘poor parenting’ per se as there have always been poor parents. But neglect looked very different 30/40 years ago to now - the neglected kids where I lived ran around ‘the estate’ raising merry hell 24/7, but ultimately they were exercised, socialised (with their little friends) and sort of gained resilience. Now ‘neglect’ looks like being cooped up on screens all day, safe but gaining zero life skills and eating rubbish.

I'm not talking about public transport per se; but HS2 has been an enormous white elephant - especially the huge amounts of money that have been spent on it that won't actually come to anything.

Why can't we have proper investment in the existing rail infrastructure? Just like we're not asking for brand new roads and motorways; just for the ones that we already have to be fit for purpose. You also have to use the pot-hole ridden roads and pavements when you travel to and from the station too, surely?

As for the M25 upgrade, I would agree with you that properly mending thousands of potholes up and down the country would have been a much wiser use of that money.

This thread.... I came on to comment about potholes and now it is about ADHD?
Bloody MN 🙄

Anyway, my local council have been spendy with "wardens" fixing potholes. A team of 5 who rock up, chuck tarmac in the hole, roll over it, then move on.
Road not closed, cars can go over it right away. It is not a permanent fix, and the holes are holes again soon enough.

Yep poor parenting...

The pendulum when we were growing up was too far one way ie kids who needed help, never got it, now its swung completely the opposite way.

@XenoBitch As we only have so much money, if we want pot holes fixed then we need to address what other things councils spend money on.... or as your example shows... Waste it on....

Capacity is the issue - if anyone is interested, I can really recommend How the railways will fix the future by Gareth Dennis.

The railways have 3 main jobs: freight, intercity services & local rail. They are the best way of transporting stuff (from a public policy perspective not from a personal choice) because they are safe, speedy & efficient but we don’t have the network / capacity to do this effectively in lots of the country, which means we don’t have enough freight on the railways in some places (so we have more lorries and more potholes), we don’t have the intercity services we need in some places (eg cross-pennine routes) & we also don’t have the local services in others. We also don’t have enough underground / metro type light rail or enough trams.

What really surprised me from the Dennis book is that the lack of capacity makes the railway more expensive to run. The other thing that really shocked me is how little progress we have made on electrication even though we’ve been doing it for years.

From a transport policy perspective, this just doesn’t make sense. No-one likes congestion, and rail is capable of getting people out of cars as if you can swap a car journey for a rail journey, there’s a good chance that the rail one will be quicker. It’s better for air pollution / CO2 targets and rail is much, much safer than the road. Buses have their place, but we’re using them to substitute for rail, which just doesn’t work as they are too slow and can’t carry as many passengers.

Where there are new / reinstated railway lines like the Elizabeth Line or the Northumberland Line these seem to be really popular - I’ve no idea why politicians & business leaders aren’t demanding more rail.

HS2 has been a massive disappointment- but part of the reason for it was to tackle the lack of capacity on the west coast mainline and that problem is still there & still needs to be solved.

I agree though that we could do without more motorways as there has been evidence for years that they don’t solve congestion, as the extra capacity just means that more people drive so the congestion persists.

Money, no maintenance. Also dreadful patching up by utility companies.
Also they don’t seem to compact enough or use the roller machine properly!
Some of the patches near me I could have done better with a shovel myself!
The ridiculous thing as well is a couple of roads near me have had speed bumps placed on them and about 3 have pot holes about a foot away!
So you have to miss the pot holes and get enough momentum to get over the speed bumps! My car has front sensors and they go crazy!

I agree. Parents dont say “no” to kids anymore. Let them run riot. Scream at things instead of saying “speak nicely”, they don’t limit screen time.

the ithery day my friend had her grandson over (he just turned 4) and she said “ohh look what he just did!” And i turned to see when she said to him “do it again” and he squeed her boobs. Seriously squeezed her boobs. He is 4. She laughed. I was seriously disgusted.

he wasnt told off. THAT IS THE PROBLEM. Kids aren’t told off for things anymore.

I've just checked the reported ones I made to our county council, the one supposed to be fixed by 16th is still not done and the other hasn't even been inspected yet.

Zero point in them fixing them in this rainy weather. It will be a poor fix and need to be done again.

Some do need even a temp fix, until drier weather, otherwise they will kill or injure a motorbike rider etc and damage vehicles.

My DS’ favourite teacher was injured badly by a pothole in London cycling to work. Didn’t really recover and had to then retire. These things happen! And he didn’t have critical illnsss insurance. The councils and Government are liable and cannot just expect people to use private insurance to insure against their failings.
ADHD and ASD in France benefits from early intervention via paediatric care for all. It’s a more multipronged approach via health from an early age including speech and language and more holistic guidance such as dietary changes.

Our neighbour was so distracted by trying to avoid the potholes that they narrowly avoided hitting somebody who had walked out on to a zebra crossing.

Thankfully they were going very slowly because of the potholes and so were able to slam on the brake.

Anyone else noticed road repairs only last a few months lately?
There’s a petition about making them last longer if anyone’s interested:
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/760798

You can't "fix" potholes. You need to rip the entire top surface off and reinforce the substrate. Anything less and the "repair" will fail the moment water gets in and freezes.

And before you do that, you'd need to reinforce roads that were designed for 5-10 tonnes to cope with 44+ tonnes.

And you'd need to ensure the surface can cope with the acceleration of EVs and the shearing force of power steering which were undreamed of back in the early 1900s when most UK roads were originally laid.

The cynic in me suggests that any contractor that is required to give a 2 year guarantee will mysteriously file for bankruptcy after 1 year and 364 days.

A road near me really needs a proper resurface - years of patch repairs and the horrendous practice of "surface dressing" with tar and large gravel have left it in an awful state. It won't happen though. The local Council are broke, so they will kick that can down the road indefinitely.

Councils need to make fixing and maintaining the roads a priority. Pretty much everyone that pays council tax uses the roads so that should be paramount.

Yes, I never understand why people always say "Oh, but councils have so many things to pay for".

Indeed they do - and one of those important things is keeping roads repaired and safe. Why should that automatically go right down to the bottom of the priorities list?

People (whether in/on a vehicle or pedestrians) can suffer lifelong injuries and even die as a direct result of dangerously unmaintained roads.

Yes. But it's motor traffic that causes and is most affected by potholes

You could walk/cycle/scoot fora thousand years on a freshly laid tarmac road.

Roman roads lasted well over 1,000 years carrying the foot and horse traffic they were designed for.

Because central Govt doesn't give them the money they need to be able to do all their other statutory roles.

Spend 100s of 1000s re surfacing a road vs paying a care agency... paying for foster care/childrens homes.... Energy bills/wage rises.... rubbish collection....

Labour promised to fix the UK roads in their manifesto, yet another promise broken, even more ridiculous is the money they do give to Councils to fix roads, isn't even ring fenced..

I agree that it's motor traffic that mostly causes and exacerbates the potholes (sometimes it's weather, flooding etc.); but cyclists still have to use the roads - and pedestrians and wheelchair and scooter users have to cross them.

If a vehicle crashes down into a potholes and gets sent wildly off course, anybody could be caught in their path.