Pothole and loose gravel danger leaves sportive organiser frustrated as council refuses to let him repair route defects

The organiser of a Scottish sportive has expressed disapointment at the council’s decision to opt against works to address road defects and loose gravel on Ride the North’s route ahead of next month’s event, also barring him from hiring contractors to fix the issues himself, including prohibiting sweeping the road.

With less than 50 days to go until the Aberdeenshire sportive is due to take place on Saturday 26 August, offering 100-mile (161km) and 64-mile (103km) routes, with participants from across the UK, the Netherlands, Germany and even the United States, organiser Neil Innes fears he cannot put the ride on with the roads “in that condition” and covered with “all sorts of mess”, including potholes, loose gravel, stones and surface dressing.

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“The issue isn’t really about potholes but much more about countryside roads that are covered in all sorts of mess, some of which can be potholes,” Neil told road.cc. “More stones, gravel, surface dressing. These things are really dangerous for cyclists but as they are not potholes they don’t merit the attention of the local authority.”

When raising the concerns with Aberdeenshire Council, Neil was told that just one of the 13 faults would be repaired as the ‘matrix’ used to decide which defects are prioritised for repair did not score them highly enough for immediate maintenance.

“As a last resort” Neil suggested he could “fix the worst of this rather than either risk the welfare of cyclists or have to cancel the event”. 

However, he explained, “The Local Authority has denied me permission… it has told me that it’s not legal for me to sweep stones off its roads. I have applied for permission to maintain the roads for them. It has not responded.”

In a comment offered to the Daily Record, Aberdeenshire Council’s head of roads and infrastructure, Philip McKay, said: “In line with the code of practice, reactive road maintenance is undertaken following a risk-based approach.

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“The defects on our network, including the route chosen by Mr Innes for the event, have been assessed and prioritised to reflect the risks posed to road users. This evaluation takes account of the ­physical characteristic of the defect and the nature of the traffic on the road.”

A senior road engineer for the area also told Neil, “What may appear as a defect/hazard for you, may not score highly enough on our matrix to warrant prioritising that defect over other defects in the area and I therefore cannot guarantee any ­reinstatements/repairs will be carried out along your proposed route(s) prior to your event.

“As for sweeping the route, it is felt that, although the surfaces have various forms of detritus on them, it is no more than you would expect on any country road and, given our current resource issues, we would not intend sweeping the route prior to your event.

“I would therefore suggest that you make entrants aware, possibly as part of a health and safety briefing, that they can expect to encounter many different surfaces along the route including mud, loose stone chippings, ruts etc and that they should take the ­appropriate measures for the conditions of the road.”

Speaking to the Scottish newspaper, Neil said the council had made it clear “that they would be doing virtually nothing about dangerous parts of the road and they have now made it clear I have no authority to make improvements myself”.

“This causes me a lot of frustration, given that I have witnessed one cyclist crash, who needed major surgery, due to the state of the road in a previous event,” he said. “The problem seems to be that complaints about roads are dealt with by engineers, who couldn’t care less about 1,400 riders coming to the area, spending more than a million pounds.

“The council seems to think that fixing these roads won’t be worth the effort.”

Similar concerns about the state of Scottish roads have been heard ahead of next month’s UCI Cycling World Championships coming to the country. Back in February, a Glasgow cyclist raised the alarm to road.cc about the “dangerous” pothole-covered state of the road race routes.

Then, a week ago, amid last-minute patching works to make the route safe ahead of next month’s event, cyclists criticised the “crude” standard of the works, Tadej Pogačar’s Slovenian team reportedly saying the Scottish roads are the “worst they’d ever seen”.