Commuter diaries - British roads, aaaaggggghhhh!

tick on a spreadsheet, meeting your target… it's what made Britain great. Oh, hang on a minute, it's what made Britain fall apart every time it rains/snows or the wind blows too strongly or the sun shines too brightly.

Luckily I've met my target so it's not my problem.

nailed it in one. thats how we do things round here....why think about it and do it properly when you can bodge it and get a tick on a spreadsheet....the repairs all hit someone elses spreadsheet so no big deal.

sometimes i just want to cry

Having just been to Germany again it did strike me how much better maintained the roads are there. One problem in the UK is that we use such antiquated road construction techniques. Another is that when road tenders are put out, the cheapest offer generally wins and cheap roads are generally built less well and don't last as long. Yet another problem is that local councils have to spend their road repair budgets before the end of a financial year, or lose the budget the next time round (as it's clearly not needed hah!). This last results in work being carried out in a hurry in cold weather when surfaces cool to rapidly to be compacted properly and which then wer out fast and require repairing. Worse still, there's an unplanned approach to the repair of utilities, so even recently resurfaced roads can then be dug up and repatched and of course, bumpy roads then fail even faster.