Pothole Report 2020

Will there still be 4000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire?

Can you believe a week has gone since the election? No sight of Ed and Ed. Nicola crowing from the rooftops of Westminster to deaf ears. David putting the boot in and teeing up the return of Blairism [Chuka? he's younger than me, thats not right!] and t'other David getting on business as usual, sans Nick.

Meanwhile, nobody was talking about cycling (save some crank UKIP Councillors.) Now I don't expect anyone to have made their mind up based on cycling policy, even avid road.cc types, so it was well off the agenda (along with the likes of fox hunting.) The best you can do is pick the most attractive smorgasbord and hope you can pick the olives off.

So we have got what we have got. The question is will the Conservatives be good for cycling in 5 years time? Hopefully being libertarians and always looking for something cost effective the Conservatives should be pro cycling and are funding investment in big city projects. London of course, but perhaps we will finally see some other cities benefit Manchester and Nottingham, etc. But what if you are unlucky enough not to live off a designated corridor like 99.9% of us.

Will the continued squeeze on councils funding lead to a general disintegration of our road surfaces? I recently saw an interesting documantary on the BBC about potholes set in Leeds. It said that the council spend £25m on fixing the roads a year, but £100m would resurface the lot and last for, well, much longer. Apart from keeping a few guys in Hiviz in a job, how is this cost effective in the long run? But where are we to find the excess funding for resurfacing work? Meanwhile patching the roads just leads to more potholes in the future.

The documentary also mentioned the claims for injuries to cyclists and pedestrians by talking to the claims team. They totally avoided talking to anyone who had actually been injured, but focused instead on the team trying to prove or disprove the claims. The documentary clearly showed an issue with a leaking water main but perpetuated the term 'road works.' We are missing a vital distinction between road works and 'utility works.' It seemed like a constant battle for the council to get these companies to do the job quickly, correctly and to pay for the problems they are causing.

I am starting to think that riding a road bike might not be possible on the roads of the future (at least not down Palatine road, time for some Wankseys to appear outside the hospital.)

Thoughts.