Potholes are caused when water penetrates tiny cracks in the road – cracks that are usually caused by traffic. When this water freezes, it expands, widening the cracks. When it melts, traffic thumps down on the space vacated by the ice and smashes new craters into the road surface. And these holes can be a nightmare for road-users. In January 2009, cyclists reported 699 allegedly hazardous potholes to cycle campaign group CTC's website, fillthathole.org.uk. In January this year, 3,508 hazardous potholes were logged. And as anyone travelling our scarred and sorry roads knows, this is just a drop in a very large puddle. The cold weather we experienced last month has led to an estimated 40% increase in the damage to our roads. But are these holes as unavoidable as the weather itself? Not everyone thinks so. "This sort of thing doesn't happen in Scandinavia or France, where they mend the roads properly," says David Weeks, director of the AIA. "A well-maintained road will withstand snow and ice without a problem. This is a legacy of 25 years of government underfunding and the siphoning of road maintenance money into other projects at a town hall level."
While it may be true that roads in other parts of Europe are less scarred by potholes, some road experts do think that our current winter climate – with more rain and a more frequent cycle of freezing and thawing – is particularly conducive to potholes. More importantly, Britain's roads carry far more traffic than most other European countries: 34m motor vehicles clocked up 508.9bn vehicle kilometres on our roads in 2008 alone – up by 50bn over the last decade.
Perhaps most crucially of all, other countries do not have so many drains and services placed under their roads, and do not give scores of privatised utility and telecoms companies the legal right to dig up a brand new road. Transport for London calculates that 1m holes are dug in the capital's roads every year, which makes the AIA's estimate of 2m holes being dug in UK roads by the utility companies each year look like an underestimate. While utility companies have an obligation to repair what they dig up to a certain standard, this has an impact on the roads. Even if the work isn't shoddy – which it sometimes is – breaking up and then repairing the road surface makes it more susceptible to potholes. So what price a few holes in the road? Road builders and local authorities (responsible for nine out of 10 miles of road; the Highways Agency looks after motorways and major trunk roads) claim that repairing the full backlog of holes in our knackered roads would cost an extra £8.5bn (on top of their normal yearly spend). Last year councils did fill in 968,195 potholes, but funding for roads is unlikely to be a priority in the future, with a public-spending squeeze. The Local Government Association has asked the Department for Transport for emergency funds of £100m to deal with the latest, most pressing repairs, but how far will this go? Harrow council estimates it will cost £2m simply to fix the new potholes in its borough.
Last night on ITV 1 was a program on potholes on UK roads –it was not good if you watched it, 50 cyclists a year will get killed or injured due to deep potholes in the roads. There was also an item of road repair that costs 3 times as much as the bodge up the local councils are using to save money, so it is a never ending round of repairs of the same potholes…………
