Pothole 12-0 Motorists

Street Repairs has learned that another motorists vehicle has been written off as a result of hitting a pothole.

Now his angry father is questioning why county council contractors Ringway did not put cones around the hole before it was repaired to prevent the same thing happening to other drivers.

Peter Folling, of London Colney, said his son, also named Peter, hit the pothole on the opposite side from H.R.Owen car sales in Watford Road, St Albans, last Wednesday, January 8, and had pulled into the Shell garage on the Noke roundabout to see the extent of the damage.

He said when Peter got to the petrol station, there were 11 other vehicles which had gone down the same pothole and suffered varying degrees of damage. One was a brand-new Mini which had its wheel shattered.

Mr Folling’s son was subsequently told that repairs to his Volvo saloon would be in the region of £800 and the age of the vehicle meant it was a write off.

He contacted the county council and was told that he would have to claim on his own insurance and then make a claim on theirs which would probably result in a court appearance.

Although the pothole had been reported to Ringway by a neighbour who saw the damage it was causing, it was the police who eventually came out and coned it off. It has now been filled in.

Mr Folling said: “You pay all that road tax to be on the road and you can understand how my son feels.”

Matthew Kelley, Ringway divisional manager, working on behalf of the county council, said: “We carried out a routine safety inspection on Watford Road on January 7, 2014. Some potholes were recorded and were subsequently repaired on January 8, 2014. None of these were in the location described, we are further investigating this report.”

If you see potholes in your area, you can report them via https://streetrepairs.co.uk/

Potholes Repaired or High Speed Rail Link Costing £48 Billion

As we near the near the end of the public consultation on the proposed HS2 rail link, listening to reports from the Government, Street repairs can't help feeling no matter what anyone says the forces behind the scheme are not going to change their mind.

This seems quite remarkable, given the current hardships we in this country are having to endure.

Every day, we hear of budgets being cut, affecting everything from care homes to hospitals.

I even heard one police force is thinking about advertising on its vehicles to raise revenue.

Then there are the roads. Most road users will be well aware of the sorry state of our highways and the accompanying photographs reported to Street repairs every day, are typical of what motorists, cyclists and motorcyclists have to put up with on a daily basis.

Now, we are being told there are likely to be even more potholes, due to the freeze/thaw action brought about by cold weather.

According to a report by the AA, a third of all vehicles in the UK were damaged by potholes during the past two years.

The true figure is likely to be higher because many motorists either don't know how to or don't bother reporting damage to their vehicles. Street Repairs has seen a large volume of reported defects of which 88% are pothole reports. That should say it all.

Have you noticed how many cars there are with either one or more of their lights not working? Jolts caused by potholes not only damage suspension parts, they can play havoc with filaments in the bulbs.

Then there's the human cost. A search on Google reveals at least three cyclists lost their lives in the UK last year as a direct result of poorly maintained roads.

The photograph taken above was sent to us via mobile phone from a concerned businessman it clearly shows it's not only poor road surfaces that are a danger, but also bad previous repairs. (full report here https://streetrepairs.co.uk/problems/pothole/432-pothole-fault-reported-hallsford-business-centre-hallsford-bridge-industrial-ongar-essex-cm5-9re-uk)

Presumably these serious road defects have got to this state because the council cannot afford to maintain the roads or they have not got the correct systems to prioritise dangerous street faults.

This has to be a national disgrace. Nobody is going to lose their life because it takes a little longer to get from Birmingham to Leeds, but more and more lives are being put at risk because of the poor state of our highways.

As for the economic benefits of HS2, it is estimated it will be take at least 20 years before any trains will run on the proposed rail link.

Thirty years ago, mobile phones were the stuff of dreams yet today one can pick up a phone and ring someone anywhere in the world.

So who knows what technologies will be available in 20 years. Will the trains be fit for purpose?

What of the costs? The current bill for HS2, not to mention the millions already spent, is estimated to be about £48 billion.

We know the final figure is likely to be much higher. This will have to be paid for not only by today's taxpayers but also our great-grandchildren. What a legacy!

On the other hand, Street Repairs understands it would cost approximately £10 billion to repair every road in the country.

Meanwhile, councils across the country are facing a losing battle trying to paper over the cracks.

So which makes more economic sense? investing in the roads would create far more jobs than HS2 and benefit millions of road users now and not the relatively few some insane time in the future.

Having a solid infrastructure is also vital to encourage investment. You are not going to impress anyone who is considering investing in this country if the national road network is in such a sorry state.

So, to the decision makers say, HS2 or any similar scheme may be of benefit to us but at this moment in time there are far better ways to spend £48 billion pounds we, our children and our children's children don't have.

 

Residents calling for change to roads

Street Repairs has heard that a petition has started in Fernhurst to persuade traffic authorities to extend the 40mph limit further south.

This would then include the crash-heavy corner at Cooksbridge, the Kings Arms and the entrance to the former Syngenta site.

There have been some 20 crashes since Noel Tonkin, who lives at Cooksbridge, began compiling his accident log in 2011.

He started the log because he was concerned about the number of incidents which were occurring, mostly unreported to WSCC.

Mr Tonkin said: “Moving the limit would also reduce the signage confusion created by the existing position of the 50mph sign – after the 50 sign comes a SLOW warning painted on the road, then a 50 repeater sign followed by yet more signs.

“I cannot understand how the complicated and confusing sequence of signs was ever allowed by the traffic safety experts – they must have thought introducing a 50 limit on a de-restricted section would slow the traffic, whereas, before, motorists using their own judgement were driving the bend at much less than 50mph.

“I am convinced the introduction of the 50mph limit at that point has resulted in an increased rate of accidents on the corner."

Fernhurst Parish Council supports the proposal to change the limit and the issue was discussed at the last council meeting, in which Councillor Michael Brown promised to support the change provided.

There has been one fatality on the corner over the past 25 years, as well as the regular involvement of emergency services.

The road is often closed for several hours following an accident and residents say the ‘problems are huge’.

Street Repairs understands that the road is often closed for many hours.

More People Use Smartphones To Report Local Problems Via Street Repairs

More than one billion smartphones were shipped last year, more people use their phone for street fault reporting than ever before.

Street Repairs predicted that usage of the smartphone to be core to it's success. More people use a smart phone to report street problems than ever before. It's so fast and in real time there is no need for a mobile phone app. 

According to market research firm IDC, 1.004 billion smartphones were shipped last year, marking a 38.4% increase from the previous year.

South Korea's Samsung accounted for the bulk of that figure, followed by Apple and China's Huawei.

Smartphones made up more than half of the 1.8 billion mobile phones sold.

IDC said this was the first time more than one billion smartphone units were shipped in a single year.

"Among the top trends driving smartphone growth are large screen devices and low cost," said Ryan Reith, program director with IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker.

"Of the two, I have to say that low cost is the key difference-maker."

"Cheap devices are not the attractive segment that normally grabs headlines, but IDC data shows this is the portion of the market that is driving volume," he said.

"Markets like China and India are quickly moving toward a point where sub-$150 smartphones are the majority of shipments, bringing a solid computing experience to the hands of many."

South Korea's Samsung extended its market dominance with 42.9% growth, the IDC survey said.

Apple, however, saw its market share decline, posting slower growth than the overall market with 12.9% growth.

A separate survey released by Strategy Analytics posted slightly differing figures.

It said there were 990 million smartphones shipped last year, from an overall figure of 1.7 billion mobile phones.

 

Pothole damage to cars up to £1.2bn

THE bill for damage to cars caused by potholes has jumped by 16 per cent to £1.2 billion in the past 12 months, a report has shown.

As heavy rain erodes patched road surfaces, figures from Halfords Autocentres show that more than 8.9 million ­vehicles across the UK – ­almost three in ten – have suffered damage as a result of potholes over the past year.

It is estimated by motoring and cycling websites that reports of dangerous potholes have increased by 18 per cent over the past 12 months, while the Asphalt Industry Alliance figures suggest that the UK’s roads are pitted with as many as two million craters.

Experts are anticipating further damage from frost and snow over the coming months.

The issue has dogged Scottish local authorities in recent years as extreme winter conditions undermine roads faster than they can mend them.

Last May, the public spending watchdog, the Accounts Commission, criticised Scottish councils for not acting on its 2011 recommendations to improve road maintenance and failing to tackle a repairs backlog fast enough.

It said a third of local, or non-trunk, roads remained in an unacceptable condition.

Rory Carlin, from Halfords Autocentres, said of the latest figures: “The surface of our roads is deteriorating to the point where drivers are now likely to encounter a potentially damaging pothole during most journeys – with rain-filled holes being harder to see and avoid.

“In a new car, a small pothole can damage wheels, tyres and shock absorbers, but with large numbers of drivers keeping their cars for longer and cutting back on routine maintenance – older, less well maintained cars are even more vulnerable.”

Rectifying the damage caused by potholes can range from putting wheels back in alignment to more costly suspension work, with an average ­repair bill of £140.

Insurance companies attribute as many as one in five mechanical vehicle failures to pothole-related damage.

The cost, frequency and regional variations in reported pothole damage were calculated by examining the steering and suspension repair work carried out across the Halfords Autocentres network over a year, starting from December 2012, and interpreting this data in line with the business’s share of the total UK ­repair market.

The government and local authorities are now spending almost £1bn a year on highway maintenance but, ­despite repairing more than 2.2 million potholes a year, experts believe that fixing the backlog could take more than ten years.

The Institute of Advanced Motorists’ director of policy and research Neil Greig said not enough was being done to tackle the issue. He added: “We’re coming up for the pothole season – end of January, February – and the frost and rain will start to lift the road patches, and that’s when things will really start to get bad again.

“If you look at the figures for the backlog of repairs, we’re just not making an inroad into that. Even though there have been initiatives in Holyrood and Westminster to put a bit more money and a bit more organisation into it, this still doesn’t seem to be tackling that backlog.”

He said things were likely to get worse.

Greig said many councils had switched from rolling programmes of patching to carrying out full resurfacing as a more permanent solution. However, the effort and time taken to do this meant that, in the short term, more potholes were being left unrepaired for longer.