Roads replaced with gravel

...and just about the whole of Worcestershire. There used to be some great roads to cycle: Salt Way out of Droitwich, A38 north of Bromsgrove, A422 and just about every road in between but now instead of the smooth slick surface I get yucky gravel. Rubbish!

Do the people who make the decisions have any idea how bad it is for cycling? You literally cannot use the road for a month or two when they first do it.

The royal parks are at it too,

The cycle path between Kensington gardens and Hyde park has had loose gravel put over the surface.

Must look up the research that this newly added road surface is better for breaking and steering on this shared surface.

maybe one with a speech bubble that says "I'M BEING SARCASTIC"?

Could ROAD.CC please give us some better smileys/emoticons as it seems that even if I post a comment on here which is so obviously outrageous followed by an emoticon to reinforce that people still think I'm being serious!

All I can say is, be glad you don't live in Iceland. Over there they have a designation of road I'd never seen before, 'Main Road - Unpaved'.

It's basically a gravel main road (and I mean actual gravel, not just a loose layer on top of tarmac) and they're lethal. They get even more fun too in the winter when you get a layer of snow on top of a layer of ice on top of a layer of gravel

As bikeboy said, its not just covering potholes. Its the full road surface thats being replaced here.

I would have no problem if it was just a temporary fix for potholes until such times as the full surface got replaced, but its now the case.

The only road that we have which is tar, is a tiny section where the council tarred because the Queen was visiting to open a plaque.

Just to add to the chorus of disapproval, there's a part of (I think) NCN 45 after Wrenbury with this crap on that's now bloody lethal. The drifted stones "grab" your wheel and will have you off if you're not on your toes.

Last month the government announced that they want spend £40bn on capital spending for infrastructure. A big chunk of this was for road building.
This was designed to 'stimulate growth'.
Here is an idea - instead of building new roads just get the same contractors to resurface every bit of road in the country. The same people will be given work and our roads will be of a high standard (or until the utility companies come and dig them up).
There was a similar programme in the 1920s and 30s when the entire road network was tarmacadamed.

The fact is though that councils road repair budgets are being cut and after the awful winter we had the year before last they're already up to their necks in pot hole repairs.

To ensure you can't sue them they have to do something but they can't afford a ten year fix so they do a cheap fix just in order to keep their heads above water.

It's not really the council's fault, would you rather they cut school budgets to fix the roads? They don't have the money to do a proper job so they're just delaying the inevitable. Sooner or later it'll get so bad they'll have to do a proper fix but until then they'll just keep going with cheap patch jobs.

What's probably worse is the fact that before this "covering" goes down the road faults (sunken trenches potholes & bumps) were easier to see!

My whole village and many of the roads around here are cover in this shit, its crap, goes everywhere but the potholes they are trying to cover. Its messy. They need to find something better.

The idiots from Devon council put it at the bottom of a steep descent in town and forgot to say anything. Cue me at the top of the descent, already in a bad mood, On my way down I suddenly realise that there is a slippery road surface and try to compensate...
I hit a parked car before I managed to get back under full control. I now have a scar on the inside of my knee about 4 inches long, surprisingly caused by Bottle cage!
I still take it really slowly on descents and I live in Devon where every climb is rewarded by an amazing downhill bit... Bah!

They did this on my TT course (B10/9), needless to say, everyone's times suddenly got worse one week.

The worst thing was that before they put the chipping on, it was nice, smooth tarmac and I got a PB on it.

Put it to your advantage and buy a new bike that would be good on 'chipseal' roads, any cross bike or even better one of them nice Salsa Warbird gravel road racers...mmmmm nice.

Seemed to be happening around where I live in the lakes over the summer too. Made some of the roads extremely sketchy at times!!! and the road surface left behind was pretty poor too. I though it was just because the roads aren't exactly heavily trafficked and so they were trying to do the bare minimum but it seems to be wider spread than that...

They're doing this all round here too (Richmond Borough in south west London). Hopefully the loose gravel is dispersing but still the surface isn't very smooth. Also it never seems to dry - could be more likely to ice up when it gets colder?

The only advantage is that the work has made the speed bumps a bit less severe.

Glasgow was testing a 'reverse gulley sucker' a few years back. Instead of sucking *** out of drains it was set up to blow cold tar coated chips in to unprepared holes in the road. I asked the operator how long that repair (made without cutting back the loose edges of the hole, priming them with painted tar, laying coarse material as a structural base and fine for the finish coat) would last "About 6 months" he said. He was right.

I tracked a road defect in Mill Road Crewe, which I passed over every 2 weeks. When I first spotted it (in the dark) I regret not taking a picture. It was a hole with a void beneath that you could stick your forearm down in to. Each time I've visited it has either sunken again, or has a new repair, suggesting that water is washing out the material supporting the road. Cracks are spreading out, settlement is obvious and detectable from the saddle of a bike, yet all the Council does every 2 weeks is spend another £200-£500 on another futile patch job.

In Glasgow there are some slots that sink across the road regularly. Thay are where tie-bars were ripped out when the trams went 50 years ago and they have yet to fix the road properly!

Dont get me started on this!

Its cheap and its nasty. The one at Gatley is already coming apart and its only been down a couple of months.. To make it worse there was a lovely bit of what i call 'European Tarmac' (flat, smooth, well laid) just on the bend where some work had recently been done. Then these 'dressers' come along and throw some tar and chippings down and obliterate it!
Its awful when its just been done - you think you tyre is going to go any minute and cars throw the chips up into your face. Then after a week or so the gutter is just a gravel trap waiting to throw you from your steed.
Even when it has settled down it is a horrible surface to cycle on. Truly awful.
They have also done ii on the old A34 between Wilmslow and Alderley.
Its a false economy and just a concession to people who (rightly) moan about the state of the roads.
Its turd polishing.
Ive not noticed Manchester doing it (they use an equally crap method of just covering potholes and running) but Salford do it too and i think Stockport are guilty.

Yep, north tyneside council did the same outside my house. The road, once smooth with the occasional pot hole, is now rough with drifts of kerb side gravel.

The noise it makes is ridiculous, sounds like a bloody boy racer with every car

It's called ChipSeal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chipseal