Dig them up and plant hedges

Saying that doesn’t make it true. The main cost is congestion but it is the motorists themselves who suffer this. Other costs like greenhouse gases and accidents are less than the taxes paid.

Plus all the damage to buildings from pollution and vibration, plus all the costs  of all the deaths, disabilities and illhealth caused by cars, plus all the costs of enforcing motoring law, plus the value of the public land used for parking etc etc etc,  Depending what you include the average subsidy to each and every car from general taxation is in the region of a thousand or two a year.  Loads of reseach on this

Every death is cost a minimum of a million pounds.

A big part of it is local councils cheaping out using surface dressing rather than resurfacing the roads properly

Disagree with this, problem is massive the under spending on road maintenance has meant that when surface dressing is carried out the roads are already to far deteriorated for it to be of much use. Would you paint your wooden window frames when the wood is rotten? No, you need to carry out the maintenance when they are in good condition, same applies to roads.

The problem with saying that councils should just do preventative maintenance is that they don’t have the funding to do it.

If you need £1000 to do a proper job that will last for 10 years, or you can spend £200 to do a 6 month bodge, it would seem obvious to do the proper job, but if you’ve only got £150 in your bank account and you’re not allowed to borrow money, you’re going to end up with 3/4 of a bad job just to try to stem the smashed wheel claims…

The figures in this article seem to be relevant:

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2024/mar/01/uk-tax-polluting-suv-green-thinktank-environment

It does seem that cars even big heavy ones are not the main or even important factor in road damage.Previous page had a good link to thisd

Elephant in the room > too many cars.

And they’re too heavy and too powerful.

Jack up fuel tax and improve public transport would be a good start.

I am not sure the roads are going to get better.  Britain has peaked.  The empire is gone, we have no one to exploit and make a fast buck out of now.  Those who were busy exploiting other countries are now exploiting their own country.  They get to keep the money and will get round a declining NHS by buying private care,  they will do the same with education.  As for roads… they will just buy bigger SUVs or fly.   We are now on the way down and everything will get worse.

I do think traffic and congestion is a problem and I’d rather see modal shift and spending on infrastructure… but I’m not optimistic about that either…

Jack up fuel tax and improve public transport would be a good start.

Thereby penalising rural residents hugely.

Or, have public transport that goes into the countryside.

Or, invest in a functioning rail network.

Or, have stronger local communities so you don’t have to drive everywhere.

The impact of cars was considered negligible. I don’t know if that is still the case.

Pretty much. Most highways owned by either National Highways or your Local Highways Authority are still designed to DMRB and the design criteria only takes into account commercial and goods vehicles. The design traffic in msa (million standard axles) used to determine pavement thicknesses is calculated using the method is CD224 (Google it if you fancy a read) and that only uses numbers of commercial vehicles (CV) or other good vehicles (OGV). Cars don’t figure in the equation. Smaller estate roads are slightly different and may have different design criteria

I work in civil engineering and have recently resurfaced railway station platforms & roads:

– Road Planer strips off the old surface to a set level (typically 200-300mm), road plainings can mainly be recycled/sold on.

– Recompact subbase adding, often crushed demolition material/recycled aggregate/fresh aggregate.

– Apply base layer Tarmac with a paver, hot roll, apply binder layer, hot roll and then the final wearing course.

– Thermoplastic paint the road markings back on.

Plenty of plant around for works, the issue is it’s really expensive, material & plant hire have shot up with inflation. Local Authorities do not maintain existing infrastructure, just look at how many road grates/gullies are now completely blocked with silts/rubbish/vegetation, this leads to significant standing water in cycle lanes and water flowing down the kerb line. Add to this winter salting, freeze/thaw, snow, heavy loading, steep inclines, poor subbase, subsidence, utility repairs, oil spills from vehicles and skidding and they don’t last much past 10/15years (varies significantly depending on vehicle numbers) before needing significant works. The best approach is usually to strip and completely resurface.

We recently resurface some big London station platforms for Network Rail, due to a lack of asset maintenance budget they wanted only half the Platform lengths resurfaced!! total bodge job, NR now have half a knackered train platform and half brand new. We recommended they did half the over all Platform numbers, but in full lengths instead… they didn’t listen. Local Authorities are even worse for not listening to the Civils Contractors. Road works are typically priced on a “bill of quantities”, meaning the contractor gets paid per unit rate installed (quantity x rate (£)). If Amey were stood around most of the day it’s likely at their own cost!

If you need £1000 to do a proper job that will last for 10 years, or you can spend £200 to do a 6 month bodge, it would seem obvious to do the proper job, but if you’ve only got £150 in your bank account and you’re not allowed to borrow money, you’re going to end up with 3/4 of a bad job just to try to stem the smashed wheel claims…

It’s called the Boots Theory:

The reason that the rich were so rich was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. … A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

It’s from the Discworld series of novels by Terry Pratchett but the theory has kind of caught on and been cited in various socio-economic examples.

And absolutely this – councils have been run into the ground the last 10+ years. They’ve used all their reserves, there’s very limited Government top up now, council tax doesn’t come close to covering everything, adult social care costs are skyrocketing and roads have really suffered.
Hence they’re forced to spend £200 on a subpar repair every 6 months rather than £1000 on a proper job.

Road economics is one of those things that completely flummoxes me. To build roads (in the Westminster model) you get an economist to tell you what economic benefit you get for your expenditure. For some reason if you can put cars through a junction faster people save time and your economic benefit increases so you can ‘invest in roads’.

I’ve yet to see anyone actually evaluate the benefit after said road is open (it usually clogs up with additional traffic and slows down pretty quickly) so we have a bizarre model that has fed constant road building but seemingly without much regard for anything once the ribbon has been cut (like induced demand and road maintenance). The disbenefits of cars moving quickly seems to not be calculated either – you’re looking at an easy million in police time and NHS costs for a road traffic accident (which correlate to speed). So basically we build roads so that we can move quickly for a short time and cost ourselves a fortune when someone inevitably messes up. No wonder the Welsh government has decided to limit road building and go for slower speeds.

Road planers just take off the wearing course, 20-30mm more like it. But 100% in agreement about drainage, we need to totally change how we do that.

the state of the roads is a political choice. other countries have little difficulty maintaining a good road network. This county has chosen to spend its money elsewhere. My clubmate died riding next to me after hitting a pothole. The compensation was more than Surrey Council’s annual pothole budget. Multiples of it.

Sorry, that was a typo, it should read “20-30mm”, this can be much deeper if the base & binder need stripping out too.

I’ve yet to see anyone actually evaluate the benefit after said road is open (it usually clogs up with additional traffic and slows down pretty quickly) so we have a bizarre model that has fed constant road building but seemingly without much regard for anything once the ribbon has been cut

Been covered and proven many times over….

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox?wprov=sfla1

Self interest kills any gains.

All the extra roads lead ultimately to a Jevons paradox…..

Hover cars, now there’s a solution. Rather than wasting money trying to fix our crumbling flooded roads we could be investing in hover car technology 😉

Rather than wasting money trying to fix our crumbling flooded roads we could be investing in hover car technology 😉

God, can you imagine the absolute chaos?! 😂
People are shit enough at driving in 2 dimensions, imagine them trying it in 3!

Hoover cars would be better as they could collect litter as they went.

Disagree with this, problem is massive the under spending on road maintenance has meant that when surface dressing is carried out the roads are already to far deteriorated for it to be of much use. Would you paint your wooden window frames when the wood is rotten? No, you need to carry out the maintenance when they are in good condition, same applies to roads.

Ha, I assume you meant agree since that was exactly my point.

Loads of roads around here full of potholes, uneven with road base collapsing, edges crumbling away and it just gets sprayed with surface dressing over the lot. By next winter it’s back to being worse than ever.

I’ve just walked 2.5 miles along a road and almost every grid was full of sh*t.

Hundreds of years ago we were masters of water and we controlled it and turned it into power.

Today we can’t even get the water too go down a grid and into the system that was designed to remove water from the road.

You mean a drain?

TiRed

the state of the roads is a political choice. other countries have little difficulty maintaining a good road network. This county has chosen to spend its money elsewhere. My clubmate died riding next to me after hitting a pothole. The compensation was more than Surrey Council’s annual pothole budget. Multiples of it.

I’m so sorry you had to witness that!

Yes, that sounds awful. I’m sorry to hear that too.

In the short term, yes. In the medium term, if there’s money available, companies will hire and train new staff and buy the machinery needed. If you want nice roads, you have to pay for nice roads.

Taking away those staff and machinery from other people who might have wanted them?

I’m no economist but it seems there is only so much effort/material the human race can muster, so the government would just be outcompeting other consumers and companies to acquire hours and machinery.

Similar would happen if the gov started a massive house building initiative, you’re going to struggle to find an electrician/plumber/roofer etc. to fix your house or do your extension. We can train some or allow more skilled immigrants? Well those people now aren’t doing whatever thing they’d have been doing otherwise, so maybe now there’s fewer hairdressers available. And all of them need tools etc.

Little bloke with a flat cap and hammer.

Today we can’t even get the water too go down a grid and into the system that was designed to remove water from the road.

We are frequently asked not to include certain types of drainage in our designs despite them being the most efficient type for that scenario. The reason – “They require maintenance”

All drainage require maintenance along with everything else to do with a road or pretty much any civil engineering. You can’t just fit and forget or it won’t operate properly and will eventually lead to bigger problems. As has been said, the problem is that local authorities don’t have the money anymore

I’d not fix them. Well, I’d fix a strip wide enough to make it easy to ride a bike in. We don’t need to do anything to encourage car use now. Too many people drive too many places too often. Anything that makes it worse is good, and I’d include knackered roads in that.

I had a novel idea this week. An easy way to half the cost of road repair would be to only repair the nearside half of each lane, making it nice and smooth to ride a bike in. Making it easier to ride a bike means more bikes, making it worse to drive a car means less cars. Job jobbed.

I’d not fix them. Well, I’d fix a strip wide enough to make it easy to ride a bike in. We don’t need to do anything to encourage car use now. Too many people drive too many places too often. Anything that makes it worse is good, and I’d include knackered roads in that.

I had a novel idea this week. An easy way to half the cost of road repair would be to only repair the nearside half of each lane, making it nice and smooth to ride a bike in. Making it easier to ride a bike means more bikes, making it worse to drive a car means less cars. Job jobbed.

People drive because the public transportation isn’t convenient, it doesn’t go where people need to go, at the times they need to go there. Unless, of course, you live in a city. If you don’t, you’re phûcked. The villages around here are lucky if they get two buses a day, are even luckier if those buses go where they need to go, at times they need to get there. If I want to go to Bristol, which is about 25 miles away, I have to get a bus to Bath, change onto another bus to Bristol, which is a two hour journey. Ok it’s free for me, or I could catch a train, but say I wanted to go to a concert in Bristol: most finish around 11pm, then you have to get to Temple Meads, which could be a 30-40 minute walk. Or possibly even a hour, unless you understand where the buses go, or are prepared to pay out for a taxi, on top of £40-50 for the gig ticket. The last train east is 10.32pm. Tell me that’s convenient for the general public. It’s almost as bad from London, the last coach is around 10.30pm, the last train from Paddington is 11.32pm. It’s a 25 minute Tube ride from either the Roundhouse or the O2, with gigs finishing around 11 pm, and queues out and for trains of fifteen-twenty minutes. Do the math. Last time I used the train for a gig in London I managed to get onto the train home with 4 minutes to spare. If I’d missed it, it would have meant a 7 hour wait, and £100 for another ticket. And you want people forced out of their cars? Get. A. Life.

I read an article somewhere a few months ago that said the number of claims put in to councils due to pot holes had shot up, yet the money paid out on claims had dropped, as councils just don’t have the money anymore.

the number of claims put in to councils due to pot holes had shot up, yet the money paid out on claims had dropped, as councils just don’t have the money anymore.

Payouts don’t come from councils, it comes from insurance.

Councils (well, their insurance companies) are very good at fighting claims.

The money for roads needs to be central as anyone from any borough can use roads across the UK.  It also needs to be charged correctly, i.e. add up cost of actually fixing all the roads to a good standard and either divide by those using a car or add to petrol tax to get same amount.

A lot of people may be surprised that it is now costing them £2,000 (or whatever the amount is) a year more to drive their car.

It also needs to be charged correctly, i.e. add up cost of actually fixing all the roads to a good standard and either divide by those using a car or add to petrol tax to get same amount.

Ringfenced taxes are (generally) a very bad idea. Taxation should be reasonably equal (ie rich people proportionally pay more than poor) and should be for the general overall good. You don’t ask victims of crime to pay more for the police service – everyone’s taxes go towards providing a police service that works for everyone.

Same way that tax on cigarettes is not reserved for lung cancer operations on the NHS, it’s general tax.

I agree that fuel duty and taxation on heavy/polluting SUVs should be much higher. I don’t agree that those funds should be reserved for road repair. That’s exactly where the whole “I pay road tax, I have more right on the roads” nonsense comes from.

My response was directional rather than detailed!  I agree that if tax, or charges if you like,  were used it needs to be carefully done but the roads are more specific than policing or health care, i.e. you don’t have to drive but not sure many would ‘opt out’ of policing or healthcare.

My point is the costs need to be added up and then presented to show all the people who complain about bad roads/want better roads what the true cost is and then any choices and costs to get to better roads would be there to see and put in the list of priorities for spending (which doesn’t come from council current budgets).

We have an awful lot of roads. I’m not surprised it’s proving hard to keep them maintained. And we have – just about – a government which is committed to building more of them.

I think munrobiker’s right in a general sense. We do need to create a world where people are less dependent on cars and chip away at the mentality of entitlement surrounding them. That might mean some sort of car pool sharing system. Better public transport. And a genuine will to make active transport like cycling and walking safer and more attractive.

The problem is that as soon as you suggest any of these, people’s knee-jerk reaction is to go into the whole ‘my life would be impossible without my car’ thing. That’s partly because people make endless, entitled choices which mean they have to use a car. Our neighbours, send their kids to school in a neighbouring town/village despite there being perfectly good schools five minutes walk from the front door. They drive half a mile, honestly, to go to the gym. They drive to shop despite the town centre being a ten-minute stroll away. Mostly they need cars because they’ve chosen to need cars,

When the end of our road was recently blocked off because of a gas leak which necessitated a ten-minute drive to get round – it’s a long road – they went frothing mad in a slightly disproportionate way. We were told we were ‘okay because we could walk or cycle’ by able-bodied people in their 30s, which was revealing.

We’ve become ‘car blind’ to the point where many people simply can’t imagine living without them and aren’t even prepared to consider it. We live with the constant noise of cars, the injuries and deaths caused by road traffic accidents and constantly inhale particulates from exhaust gasses, tyre breakdown and brake pads without giving it a second thought. People who’ve never smoked die of lung cancer and develop emphysema and asthma is rising steadily among kids and the lack of exercise in people’s lives is part of the whole health crisis, but we simply gloss over it on the assumption that at some point in the future, electric vehicles will fix it all.

But on the pot-hole front, no idea. Maybe if everyone drove hulking 4x4s, which seems to be the general trend, then road repair wouldn’t matter as much?

When the end of our road was recently blocked off because of a gas leak which necessitated a ten-minute drive to get round – it’s a long road – they went frothing mad in a slightly disproportionate way.

I’ve seen this scenario play out a number of times, including hysterical claims of “being trapped in our house!!!1!” when the reality was an extra ten minutes driving or, god forbid, walking 🙄

Ha, I assume you meant agree since that was exactly my point.
Loads of roads around here full of potholes, uneven with road base collapsing, edges crumbling away and it just gets sprayed with surface dressing over the lot. By next winter it’s back to being worse than ever.

What i meant was, surface dressing is an excellent way of maintaining the integrity of the road surface, unfortunately due to lack of funding, by the time roads are dressed they are no longer structurally sound, hence my analogy with wooden window frames, doesn’t matter how much surface treatment is applied once the structure is shot, it isn’t of much use.
I appreciate no one likes surface dressing but done correctly at the right time the cost is more that 10x less per m2 than planing off and resurfacing with fresh asphalt and can then extend the life of a road by 10 years or more.