Roadworks

[Chopper the ex Copper]

Recently a company has started digging up road round here to lay fibre optic cable for intermaweb stuff. I don't know why, because they're horrifically expensive so no one here has the slightest inclunation to sign up to them, and our local internet - fibre-to-cabinet - is actually pretty decent already.

Anyway, things are so bad now that 2 of the 3 roads out of the village are closed for 2 weeks to allow them to make their mud pies, and while the 3rd is open there are roadworks again further out, necessitsting a big detour in order to get anywhere. This is annoying enough in he cosseting comfort of my BMW X5, but a serious ballache when on a bicycle ride.

If that isn't bad enough, our road was resurfaced last year. A proper job, they dug up the old one and gave us 6 inches of lovely, glass smooth, super sexy tarmac...only for Gigaclear to dig big holes in it and ruin it.

We didn't ask for it, we don't want it, now &$%@ off back to your depot and leave the roads of our leafy shire well alone.

Is anyone else being blighted by this sort of thing?

 

[CassidyAce]

Council tax at nearly £300/month and roads full of pot holes: that's bugging me. Road works? I think I'd be pleasantly surprised that the council was actually doing some maintenance instead of striking lucrative deals with large property development companies and giving planning permission for hideous structures that look like prisons.

As for the interweb upgrades . . . I don't know. Temporary inconvenience vs cat videos in higher definition . . . Difficult choice.

 

[Siish]

Due to my job I do a lot of driving, I can definitely confirm that roads do work, albeit less fun and more stressful, it's easy to get my van to places via the designated routes than through farmers fields, woodlands etc

 

[mk one]

Seem to be everywhere recently, lights always popping up at peak times on the busiest roads.

Usually not a problem for me when on my bike, though frustrating as 8 out of 10 times it is just a van parked with someone sat inside, no actual road workings going on.

Also around here more roads through little villages/hamlets are being closed to through traffic, access from one end only.

 

[Chopper the ex Copper]

What narks me off is when they're not even working on the carriageway, but cone off a lane and slap in lights just so they have somewhere to park their vans. They should be made to unload their gear, and then move the vans elsewhere, even if it means a mighty 2 or 3 minute walk to get to the site - they should not be allowed to use cones and lights just to sequester a carriageway as a convenient car park.

I always check www.roadworks.org to check their permits, and its quite surprising how many have no permit or are exceeeding the stated permissions on their permit. I gleefully dob those in to the carncil.

 

[Tootyred]

There is no joined up thinking.....that would be far too complicated for large companies to achieve!

Having had the pavement shredded by virgin media, the council finally re did the whole thing....( blocking off all the victorian surface water drains from the houses in the process, but that's another story).....only for 6 weeks later to have british gas dig it all up for pipework improvements and leave a raised cut through the whole lot!

Amazing.

 

[Imlach]

At last a thread I can use to spill my bile, which I'll soon have to bottle up and sell to highest bidder if I produce anymore.

I believe roadwork is purposefully dragged out and bodged regularly here in my neck of the woods in Denmark, probably by people that genuinely enjoy standing in the pissing rain at 6 AM because there might be pastries. Just outside the house they've dug up the bicycle lane about 4 times because they don't seem to be able to lay down a couple of pipes correctly. Perhaps they thought the pipes were actually going to be connected to a large scale underground bong and therefor installed them vertically. I don't know.

Now they've dug up the coastal road here, which was already scarily narrow and fairly dangerous on the bike, seeing as they like to mix various consistencies of tarmac, ideally around the side of the road where the bikes go, so instead of potholes you have lovely edges that the wheel can get stuck in. They've just now scraped up a huge long line through the side of the road as well, which is about 2 to 4 cm deep, if you don't want to risk getting your wheel stuck in it you have to drive into the middle of the road. That'll of course anger the drivers behind me, increasing my stress levels to a point where I'd rather go on the drink than exercise ever again. After that you're met by 2x 10 meter stretches that are controlled by temporary traffic lights, adding a good 5 minutes waiting time for a 20 meter stretch.


Now, you might be wondering who the 'they' are that I keep mentioning, and honestly I'm not sure, but I'm led to believe that they run this simulation that we live in and they're observing from above, noting down my stress responses while laughing in a high pitched, gurgly way.

 

[Betsy]

This is like Radio2 in the afternoons...

 

[Joe_Rides]

End of March is financial year-end for most councils / local government. So Feb & March is always "panic stations" because they haven't spent their allowance, and if they don't spend it all, they dont get as much next year.

It boils down to laziness and is akin to school days, ignoring your homework all weekend and doing it on the bus in on Monday morning!

 

[Chopper the ex Copper]

And another thing...

Potholes. They send a man out with white paint to mark the pothole so the repair men know which one to fill in. But the paint is rubbed away in 2 days, or the pot hole grows and swallows the painted markings, so why bother?

Sack paint man, save a salary and lower council tax, or redeploy him to the team that actually fills in the potholes.

A year or so ago I was having a chat on the rap rod with a woman from the council highways department, AKA Kier Ltd as they have the contract. She was trying to gain my sympathy by telling me therp budget wasn't big enough to keep on top of it all, to which I replied...

"Strange that, because there's enough money in the budget for Kier to cream a profit off the top from not fixing potholes."

She didn't have an answer to that.