Rapid road deterioration

[frisbee]

A lot of the minor country roads around where I live, Gloucestershire, have noticeably deteriorated in just the last few weeks. Long cracks running along the road and the sections of the road either side of the crack appear to be at different angles.

Larger roads seem fine.

I don't see any of them being fixed so I guess they'll just fall apart. Water seems to be getting into the cracks already, which is what made them so noticeable.

[anonymous-user]

HGVs and fecking huge tractors.

[brisel]

Subsidence in the dry weather. And heavy vehicles. And lack or repairs for the road edges.

My local part of Oxfordshire is just as bad.

[ARHarh]

Round here they have a man who paints white lines round the holes and broken edges, then 6 months later he comes back and paints his lines again as they have worn away. Sometimes someone comes and puts some tarmac in a hole but leaves the hole next to it as it has no white lines, then we have a frost and the hole that was left expands into the hole that was repaired, and the man who paints the lines has to come back and paint some more lines.

If the man with the paint had tarmac instead it might work more efficiently.

[SteveStrange]

ARHarh said:

Round here they have a man who paints white lines round the holes and broken edges, then 6 months later he comes back and paints his lines again as they have worn away. Sometimes someone comes and puts some tarmac in a hole but leaves the hole next to it as it has no white lines, then we have a frost and the hole that was left expands into the hole that was repaired, and the man who paints the lines has to come back and paint some more lines.

If the man with the paint had tarmac instead it might work more efficiently.

He should carefully cut around the hole and move it to the side of the road where nobody can drive over it. Job done.

[Vlad the Imp]

The long cracks running along the road on a country road are probably due to clay shrinkage. The lack of rain means that water trapped in clay over the wet months is driven out and so the clay underneath the road shrinks. There’s a lot of it about this year and it’s rather tricky to fix as it usually involves reconstructing the road, digging out the clay and replacing it with a better material eg Type 1 sub-base. This isn’t cheap and most local authorities don’t have the budget for it.