Road resurfacing

sevenhills

How often do roads get resurfaced?
In my area the council have top-dressed? some of  the footpaths.
Some locals are saying what is the point, they should do the main roads that are in a poor condition.
My cul-de-sac road has been top-dressed. Do all local authorities follow the same procedure for road resurfacing, is this important for pot hole claims?

boobyd

Similar thoughts I had this morning,have just gone through an 2 parts of a village/town where used to live ,all the footpaths have been done yet the road is the same as it was 3 years ago,pot holes,rippled surface, bus stop barriers(big undulations inroad surface at a bus stop)
Local dual carriage A road like driving on a bucking bronco due to sinking road surface yet 300 yards later roadworks to extend pathway/cycle lane/ new bus route 

oldernonethewiser

Each council will have it's own budget and priorities so not everywhere wont be the same.

You could write and ask about their programme of works.

My council has an app where I can report issues which they do feed back on so at least you know if something/anything is happening.

Money_Grabber13579

Top dressing is cheap compared to other forms of resurfacing. It’s designed to seal the top layer of the road surface and prevent any further potholes from forming although it does nothing for any existing potholes, so they need to be repaired properly first. However, it’s only really suitable for low traffic roads, hence why it’s only really side roads, pavements and country roads which get that treatment. 

As another poster has pointed out though, I don’t understand the current obsession with building cycle lanes when the roads are in such bad state of repair. Particularly when they don’t go anywhere or can’t be used anyway. A hard shoulder along the side of a road near me was recently rebuilt as a combined footpath/cycle way. Cars parked on it before and cars still park in it now. Also, the only places it leads to is a motorway and a busy dual carriageway which isn’t suitable for cycling anyway.

oldernonethewiser

If cycle lanes are fit for purpose then they can be a good idea and help to encourage people to cycle but.....

Cycle lanes are often not compatible with the current road layouts so end up being poor for cyclists and inconveniencing other road users.

HillStreetBlues

oldernonethewiser said:

If cycle lanes are fit for purpose then they can be a good idea and help to encourage people to cycle but.....

Cycle lanes are often not compatible with the current road layouts so end up being poor for cyclists and inconveniencing other road users.

Some cycle lane are a joke,seen them painted then only allow about a metre space left for cars and then there's this.

HillStreetBlues

A road where I lived was horrible, very uneven, been calls for about 10 years to do something about it. Eventually it was resurfaced while I was moving, so ended up being diverted! Wonderful timing.

sevenhills

Money_Grabber13579 said:

Top dressing is cheap compared to other forms of resurfacing. It’s designed to seal the top layer of the road surface and prevent any further potholes from forming although it does nothing for any existing potholes, so they need to be repaired properly first. 

There seems to be top resurfacing for footpaths which is very thin, top resurfacing of roads and then total resurfacing.
I believe concrete roads are more common in some countries.

Bigphil1474

I would suggest that maintaining the footpaths is more of a priority as the risk of pedestrians being injured and claiming is higher than claims for vehicle damage on the roads. It might just be down to the bean counters.

We used to have a local councillor live in our street for about 5 years. In that five years, we had our street resurfaced twice (second time with that grey gravel on sticky tar crap), and both sides full length footpaths resurfaced with some sort of liquid coating (actually looked quite good when finished). The councillor moved out about 8 years ago and no works in our street since then other than Virgin Media digging up the paths every few metres. Probably just a coincidence the councillor living there.