Leasedrive Velo Blog

Roddy Graham, Commercial Director

Black holes simply will not go away – ask any scientist! Indeed those I keep ranting on about (see blogs dated Jan 14 and Feb 18) just continually grow in number and size. Of course, those I write about are the very ones that jar your spine ever more frequently and might end up smashing your vehicle suspension too. Potholes are on the increase and so are the costs to you and me, as already predicted.

It has been reported that already one council has increased its council tax by more than originally planned just to cover its increased road maintenance bill. On an average council tax bill, this will equate to £5 per household.

Local councils, through their Local Government Association, have been lobbying the Department for Transport for an extra £100m to cover emergency repairs.

As previously reported, it is estimated that there are 1.6 million potholes on the 246,000 miles of the UK’s secondary roads, with an increase of 700,000 in the past two years alone and still rising.

One pothole every 120 yards resulted in compensation claims last year of £47m for injury and damage plus an estimated £240 repair bill for the average driver.

The AA itself estimates that insurance claims directly resulting from pothole damage has increased fourfold in the past two years. Last month, 2,400 vehicle claims were submitted alone.

To make a successful claim against a local council, drivers must have reported the problem first. The trouble is that now so numerous are the potholes that councils are failing to meet their own average targets of making a temporary repair within 48 hours.

Until last month, apparently the worst road in the UK was Priory Road in Hull which had 319 potholes over a 400-yard stretch.

Given that frightening statistic it might be worth the likes of Potholes UK running national, county and local council league tables of the ten worst reported roads.

The Asphalt Industry Alliance reckons the average repair cost of filling in a pothole to be £70 and it will take 15 years to fix at a cost of £10bn.

Plenty of time then to get those league tables up and running, and naming and shaming!

Roddy Graham, Commercial Director

Glad to see government is getting heavy on penalties on a number of fronts.

First was the news last month that the Sentencing Guidelines Council has issued penalty guidelines relating to those found guilty under the UK Corporate Manslaughter (England, Wales and Northern Ireland) and Corporate Homicide (Scotland) Act or Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.

Under the former, a work-related road death will result in an organisation being fined rarely less than half a million pounds and more likely several million pounds.

Under the latter, the fine will be seldom less than £100,000 and more likely several hundred thousand pounds.

All we need now is for relevant prosecutions to take place and heavy fines imposed for the message on duty of care to be really driven home.

Being stuck in a traffic jam is never fun but when the roadworks overrun their due finish date, drivers have every reason to fume behind the wheel. However, up to now there has been little real incentive for contractors to get on with the job and finish on time. Certainly, not in financial penalty terms.

That’s all about to change with those contractors flagrantly breaching their obligations facing a tenfold increase in penalties from a daily charge of £2,500 to a whopping £25,000 per day.

According to the government, road works cost the economy £4.2 billion per year. Many of these are the result of utility companies digging up the road and government is keen for them to finish on time or face the consequences. They won’t even be allowed to pass on the cost of any fines on to consumers either.

At the same time, local councils are being given extra powers to charge utility companies for inspecting the progress and completion of road works. Again, with the chance of being charged for additional inspections, following poor rectification work, perhaps we’ll start seeing better road surface repairs with proper sealing and matching of surface levels.

Currently, in addition to having to zigzag between potholes, we have to contend with bouncing over uneven road surfaces as the result of poor road repairs.

With councils hard pressed to find emergency funds for ‘winter’ road repairs, perhaps utility companies should face the costs of resurfacing the whole road in which they have dug a channel. That way at least all road users would be guaranteed an even surface on which to travel and councils’ road repair bills would be reduced. After all, the utility companies have plenty of money in their own coffers!

Roddy Graham, Commercial Director

What requires a driver’s reaction time of seconds and yet a council’s reaction time of weeks? Yes, you’ve guessed it – a pothole!

Those black holes I wrote about on January 14 are indeed getting a whole lot bigger and, worst still, a whole lot more numerous. At the rate that councils are trying to catch up on repair work, all our cars will be in the knacker’s yard.

Recalls may be grabbing all the headlines at the moment but it won’t be long at this rate before the vehicles filling service bays up and down the country will be those in for suspension, tyre and wheel damage.

Even more frightening is the thought that a damaged tyre subsequently explodes on a busy motorway causing potential death or destruction, or the broken suspension on a vehicle sends it careering uncontrollably into a busy bus queue.

It is estimated that UK roads have deteriorated by 50 per cent with an accompanying dramatic increase in those black holes. The latest count suggests that on the 246,000 miles of our secondary roads, there are 1.6 million potholes, an increase of 700,000 in the past two years and still rising. That’s equivalent to one pothole every 120 yards. Well, I’ve got news for the statisticians. The journey to work this morning revealed more like one every 12 yards!

Already, there is an outstanding £10bn-worth of pothole repairs with us, the increasingly poorer taxpayer, faced with having to fund millions more pounds worth of road repairs. Meanwhile, local councils are lobbying the government for a £100m emergency repair fund.

Compensation claims in 2009 rose to £47m for injury and damage after a 30 per cent increase in the number of potholes. Remember though, to successfully claim, you have to first of all have reported the problem to your local council. If you can’t be bothered calling in, log on to Potholes website.

The latter site estimates that potholes cause as many as one in five mechanical failures on UK roads, costing drivers an estimated £320 million every year.

The AA is calling for two pence per litre from fuel taxes to be used to repair our potholes. Not a bad suggestion but then we all know how government likes to siphon off road tax and fuel duty to pay for things totally unconnected with motoring and our roads.

With an election coming up, it’s time we are all started lobbying hard before our roads degenerate to official third world status.

Roddy Graham, Commercial Director

The black holes just got a whole lot bigger! And a lot more numerous.

As the country is swathed under even more snow as a result of yet another dump, you can be sure road surfaces up and down the country are cracking up.

I alluded to as much in last week’s blog.

Now it’s official. Councils are worried as hell as they face going over budget to try to stem the tide of crumbling roads. Neglected in the good times, they possibly cannot afford to repair them in the bad times.

Several councils have already tried to estimate the impact on their budgets. Buckinghamshire is already paying an extra £18,000 per week for repair teams while Harrow reckons the severe winter will cost them £2m.

ICE, not the blue or black stuff but the Institution of Civil Engineers, has warned the fluctuating weather, with periods of freezing and thawing, is contributing to the break-up of road surfaces. This is particularly pronounced on roads which have already been neglected. Pot holes will definitely be on the increase.

Water gets into the road cracks, freezes, and then expands the crack. It then becomes a vicious circle. The now wider crack draws in more water, which when it freezes, expands the crack further. Effectively, our roads are cracking up.

Government is responsible for motorways and major A roads, councils for the rest. Go figure it out. With councils having to prune spending in the current recessionary climate, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realise our already ‘third world’ roads in many parts of the country are going to get a whole lot worse. There just isn’t the money in local council coffers to address the problem.

So not only may drivers decide to opt for four-wheel-drive next time around to be able to cope with the increasing frequency and severity of snow and ice but they may be forced to do so in order to travel in some degree of comfort over a pock-marked road landscape.

It has been estimated that the cost to the UK economy of the worst winter so far in 30 years to be in the region of £14.5bn. You can bet your bottom dollar that the long-term cost in terms of damage to our main transport arteries will be considerably more. Let us hope that we don’t all suffer too much from a singular lack of investment in a 21st Century national road network.

Hot on the heels of the news that potholes have increased by a third in the past year, comes news that we might not see them before we crash down them with increased regularity.

Autoglass is warning fleets to expect more windscreen damage this year as the vibration resulting from the jolt can lead to windscreen chips developing into cracks. Sounds a bit like what’s happening to local councils and Government. Both seem on the point of imploding fast.

Earlier in the year, Warranty Direct had advised a 13% increase in pothole-related suspension and axle damage. Then at the end of April came news from the Asphalt Industry Alliance that the average road now has a black hole every 120 yards!

English councils filled an average 5252 holes each last year, well over the 4,000 John Lennon sang about that were suffered by Blackburn motorists in ‘A day in the life’ back in ’67. On top of that, there were an average 13,212 utility trenches dug in each authority, many leading to irregular road surfaces and further potholes.

Due to an £8.5bn shortfall in funding, it will apparently take nearly 13 years to get all the current holes filled up! That’s assuming not a single one appears in the meantime! The Welsh will wait a further 2.6 years to realise the same dream.

Interestingly, it costs almost the same to repair a windscreen chip as it does a pothole, the average repair bills being respectively £63 and £65!

According to the AIA, it would cost each local authority £47m to get rid of all the black holes in their ‘patch’. I know that some councils pay more in claims resulting from pothole-related damage and injuries than they do in filling the bloody things up.

Government creams a massive £46bn from road tax and yet only invests 20% of that sum back into road network development and maintenance. The remaining 80% disappears into another black hole!

Before we rapidly descend into becoming a third world economy, based on road surface standards, Government should kick-start our economy as Obama is doing in the States by investing in our road network and creating more jobs as a result.

The state of our roads is truly scandalous, the worst in Western Europe. The development and maintenance of a national road network is an essential part of the famous integrated transport policy we are still waiting from this government. Like the pothole repairs, we are destined to wait a long time too for such a policy.