Im scared to drive my corrado!

[vw domo 0]

Has anyone noticed how much they have been resurfacing the roads around Hampshire, its ridicules! You can

[Toad 0]

Hahahaha.

 

I might have something to do with that.... :wink:

 

Surface dressing is a very good cost effective method of increasing road lifespans and skid resistance. Have you been observing the 10mph signs put up by RMS? I guess other drivers don't, but it's the best way to reduce the number of stones being dislodged.

 

Nothing really to do with potholes either, although gangs will have patched any holes /imperfections over the last few months in preparation for the surface dressing program.

 

:dorky:

[coullstar 0]

Just imagine what its like on the bike then :mad2:

[Toad 0]

To be honest I use one road on my way to work and the chippings have all embedded or been swept up in a few days, and now a week on it's a lovely fairly smooth grippy surface :)

[vw domo 0]

It is agreeably much better after but I just feel my myself sinking into my chair gritting my teeth as I see a tanker heading in the opposite direction :gag:

[vw domo 0]

by the way, thoughts go out to all the bike riders :salute:

[coullstar 0]

Thanks, its just plain lazy in my view and never liked it. I was on one tonight that had been done a couple of weeks ago and the tracks where car go were fine but there is still loose chips in between.

[Jim 2]

You should try riding on those surfaces on a road bike. It's freaking ridiculous. Not only are you bashed around to the point of falling off but all the tar makes the rocks stick to your tyres to give you a knobbly stone offroad set of tyres.

 

Absolutely ridiculous.

[dr_mat 0]

And everyone who lives nearby gets a free ton of gravel deposited on their driveway/garden because so few of the stones actually stick to the road ..

It may be cost effective compared to resurfacing properly, but it's a bit of a pain in the ass..

[vw domo 0]

i mean, do the government not get enough money to resurface them properly of something, wheres all the taxes going? and when i phone them up are they going to re-bait me for my new paint job and windscreen? i doubt it!

it just seems lazy and dangerous. :?

[Supercharged 2]

Yeah it's a joke but we all know road tax doesn't go back into roads...

[Toad 0]

Thanks, its just plain lazy in my view and never liked it.

 

And everyone who lives nearby gets a free ton of gravel deposited on their driveway/garden because so few of the stones actually stick to the road ..

It may be cost effective compared to resurfacing properly, but it's a bit of a pain in the ass..

 

Sorry, but I don't agree that it is a "lazy" method, road surfaces like many things suffer from UV degradation, they also get cracks, and the texture of the surface becomes poorer (and thus the skid resistance decreases as the stones become polished by traffic) However, the sub base of the road is still sound.

 

By surface dressing the road, the bituminous binder material fills micro cracks, and protects the sub layers from UV, it is also slightly flexible. The chippings spread on top provide the texture vehicles need for gripping. The size of the chippings is dependant on the type of road, speed limit, traffic etc, most of what you might see around Hampshire will probably be 10mm chippings with a further layer of 6mm to help lock the 10mm chippings into place and get a better macro texture.

 

Unfortunatelty, the embedment of the chippings is dependant ont he traffic flow after they are spread, and you clearly need to apply more chippings than actually required to ensure proper coverage. The surface dressing site should be swept within a few days of the surface dressing, and further sweepings should take place as deemed neccessary. Obviously, further sweeping would be preferential, but you can't have everything sadly.

 

 

i mean, do the government not get enough money to resurface them properly of something, wheres all the taxes going? and when i phone them up are they going to re-bait me for my new paint job and windscreen? i doubt it!

 

The Highway Authorities do not get enough money, not by a long long way. There are 9000km of publically maintainable highway (excluding motorway and trunk roads) in Hampshire. We get £35million to maintain them. By the time you factor in everything that is carried out in the name of maintenance, it's a pittance. As well as resurfacing/surface dressing there is pot hole filling, gully cleansing, hedge trimming, lining, maintenance of street lighting, footpaths, salting during the winter to name a few activities. Add on to that drainage schemes, changing road layouts etc....

 

You might think resurfacing the road is better, but it costs £20/square metre compared to less than £2/square metre for surface dressing.

 

More and more of your taxes are actually going into adult services, i.e. looking after old people. Highways on the whole are taking cutbacks becuase of this.

 

At the end of the day, it sounds harsh, but people have to put up with minor delays and inconviniences for the long term benefit of the road network.

[jazzdevil 0]

Has anyone noticed how much they have been resurfacing the roads around Hampshire, its ridicules! You can

[vw domo 0]

Nothing against you toad, you seem to know your stuff.

Do they lay down tar for the gravel to stick to or just dump it straight over the top of the old road then?

Yea they have just started doing the (A326) matchwood bypass now, I find myself trekking down the back roads to avoid it but I think in running out of alternative roughs.

[MattWilde 10]

Toad, I completely understand what you are saying, and agree mostly but I live on the border of two counties (bucks and oxon) and they both do different things. Bucks re-surface with new tarmac, they close off half the road to do one side, then repeat for the other. In the 27 years i've been alive I only remember this being done once, and the roads that have been done are still lovely and smooth. In Oxon they use this glue and stones stuff, similar delays with driving at 10mph but with the added annoyance of stone chips and possible windscreen cracks. Then at junctions, where the new surface has been torn by people turning their wheels, it gets shut for a day and gets repaired. This can happen a few times over the course of a year. Then it happens all again a few years later, the bypass I have to use everyday has been done 4-5 times in my memory. I just can't see it being a good long term fix, short term saving but long term loss and bloody annoying for the users of the road. They are currently doing the road I use to get to work, and after one day of trucks flying past at 50mph I now use another road to cut out as much of the resurfacing as poss.

[CrazyDave 0]

Ah this old chestnut. I affectionately call it, "Shit and Grit" and really hate encountering any in the C or any other car I own for that matter.

 

Several miles of the Daventry Road have just been done and it was hideous on the first day, but three days later after several sweepings it's looking really fresh and grippy. I just wish we had some way of finding out when it going to be done so we could avoid those routes for a few days.....

 

Gully Cleansing? I like the sound of that :lol:

[doug_GT 0]

we have that shit all round my house, outside my house and a lot of the roads near me

its a pain i have to sweep the gravel off my drive all the time and its been there a year now and still flicks stones up every so often :gag:

[dinkus 10]

Yeah, I hear what you're saying Toad, but shirely there's a better way? Like MattWilde says, other councils don't do always do it, so there must be alternative methods that last longer, even if it's just a different type of surface dressing.

 

I've no idea what the continental lot do, but the road surfaces in Germany and Holland are hugely better than they are here. I'd imagine they probably spend more money on them, but it'd be interesting to find out what they do and how their roads are so much better.

[Toad 0]

Do they lay down tar for the gravel to stick to or just dump it straight over the top of the old road then?

 

There's a couple of methods, spray binder material (like tar) onto the road (already swept etc) then put chippings down, sometimes spray and chip, and repeat, sometimes chippings then tar.

 

 

Toad, I completely understand what you are saying, and agree mostly but I live on the border of two counties (bucks and oxon) and they both do different things.

 

 

I just can't see it being a good long term fix, short term saving but long term loss and bloody annoying for the users of the road. They are currently doing the road I use to get to work, and after one day of trucks flying past at 50mph I now use another road to cut out as much of the resurfacing as poss.

 

Not all counties use the same methods, Hampshire use surface dressing, and are actually one of the main users I believe.

 

In optimum conditions, a road has a 40 year lifespan, it should last 20 years then be surface dressed 3 times at 7 year intervals to maintain the surface texture, then dug up and completely rebuilt. In reality, nothing gets that kind of attention due to cost.

 

Some instances where surface dressing is used is actually for safety reasons. In the town I live in 3 people were killed, and a couple driven into where the road surface became too polished, it's been surface dressed and is now nice and grippy.

 

I just wish we had some way of finding out when it going to be done so we could avoid those routes for a few days.....

 

Gully Cleansing? I like the sound of that :lol:

 

There should be boards up warning you a few weeks before. Otherwise, if you are interested in lookign at roadworks or want to find out how long they are going to be in an area use http://elgin.gov.uk, sadly it doesn't cover your area Dave, but under the New roads and street works act, all activites which break up the surface of the road, or involve resurfacing must be noticed publically, and you should be able to check them with your local council.

 

Gully cleansing? The contract is worth millions... over 200,000 gullies that need cleaning once a year in Hampshire, I spend a lot of time at the moment breaking down the electronic records from the contractor, converting longs/lats to Eastings and Northings and sticking it all into our mapping software to interrogate it properly. Fun eh??

 

 

Yeah, I hear what you're saying Toad, but shirely there's a better way? Like MattWilde says, other councils don't do always do it, so there must be alternative methods that last longer, even if it's just a different type of surface dressing.

 

I've no idea what the continental lot do, but the road surfaces in Germany and Holland are hugely better than they are here. I'd imagine they probably spend more money on them, but it'd be interesting to find out what they do and how their roads are so much better.

 

Arguably there might be better methods, but surface dressing has been deemed the most cost effective method here. On the continent they use a material that we've banned in the UK because it turns into an ice rink with a bit of rain!