Road building why are we so BAD at it?

Lewis_Winthorpe said:
According to a Canadian friend it is the surfaces. He's worked in the industry and says the roads over there last years and years and are done far quicker. The stuff they use here is of poorer, cheaper quality. Don't shoot the messenger just going off what he said.
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In the USA and Canada many country roads are laid predominantly with concrete. It’s far harder and longer lasting than tarmac. That stands to reason - concrete is an integral material with a hard surface set by chemical bonds, whereas tarmac is loose gravel held together just by sticky tar. Concrete also withstands better the harsh winters of Canada and the fiercely hot summers of the southern USA. In the cities asphalt is more common.

The down-side is that traffic noise is much higher from tyres on concrete than on tarmac. Which is one reason why the UK tends to prefer tarmac everywhere inc motorways. Even so, concrete will likely be the substructure. The other is that tarmac is easier to repair than concrete, if they bother to get around to it.
 
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I've driven back to Blackpool for Christmas on the trip back between Nürnberg and Wurzburg they are "resurfacing" a 90km stretch of the Autobahn.

When I say resurface what it actually means is removing a depth of approximately 2 feet, not what we would call the surface.

The resulting road is immaculate its as smooth as you can imagine and seems to last for years without the need for all the minor repairs we seem to suffer.

Really I'm just echoing the above, we do a half arsed job and use shoddy materials, its the British way.
 
The issue with Edith Rigby Way, and most of the new roads in north Preston is theyve been designed largely to create more areas for house building rather than relieve traffic. The whole of the areas around it are going to be new estates and they’re going to keep pushing the boundaries out towards Clifton. It’s terrible planning for everything other than estates.
 
My Grandparents live over Wyre and they're scared to go out with all the changes. Although, to be frank, they really shouldn't be driving anymore.
 
I’d say the volume of traffic is down to the increased number of houses in the area, the number of cars per household (and how even the youngest now have cars).
Added to bad road planning, reduction in speed limits, introduction of traffic calming measures, closing perfectly good roads, reducing the number of lanes, replacing roundabouts with traffic lights, too many pedestrian crossings, roads that are too narrow to accommodate the traffic numbers and buses, etc.
 
Seaside Aggro said:
The issue with Edith Rigby Way, and most of the new roads in north Preston is theyve been designed largely to create more areas for house building rather than relieve traffic. The whole of the areas around it are going to be new estates and they’re going to keep pushing the boundaries out towards Clifton. It’s terrible planning for everything other than estates.
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The underling plan as always is creating more roads to get out of/bypass Preston.
 
Bennys_was_a_mob said:
Why are we so bad at building roads in this country?
Local new road the Edith Rigby Way (off junction 2 M55) has been open for less than 6 months and the Northern route to Preston Docks is already half coned off. Surely before this road was opened that would have inspected the work and deemed it sufficient. Obviously not 🤨.
The Skippool to Windy Harbour bypass already 6 months overdue and massively over cost still looks a long way off finished. But the real question about this road (apart from the extortionate price) is what is it going to actually achieve?
The only real thing I can see is it'll get us to our next traffic jam at Windy Harbour quicker because it'll be a duel carriageway 🤔
We really are shit in this country at many such things.
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Same all over the country

The roads are a joke

I would blame the Government as they have turned Councils into money spinning entities who have contractors and zero employees ‘fixing’ them

They would rather fine you than fix any of the zillions potholes

There is no collective ethic in the British Society to make things better - it’s patchwork, charge the earth and run off
 
There’s a couple of places that method would have been very useful for the new (cough) bypass. 👍


Just when you think they can’t fcuk it up any more, they go and surpass themselves. The latest balls up is deliberately reducing the already narrow lane width heading east towards the Skippool set of traffic lights. They’ve painted chevrons in the left lane, forcing cars closer together, with a short funnel in at the end. What the fcuk for, is anyone’s guess.
 
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