Regular readers of my blog will know that I am a keen motorcyclist, and there’s nothing we motorcyclists like more than a far-reaching ribbon of ultra smooth tarmac. Britain has some amazing rural routes with lovely bends and fabulous scenery, but it doesn’t have too much of the aforementioned high quality surfaces. Indeed, our rural B roads are only resurfaced on average every 79 years. This is just about twice as long as the recommended resurfacing interval of 40 years. In fact, our road network is now in need of a whopping £8.5billion spend just to bring the road surfaces up to a minimum standard.
This is hardly just an issue affecting bikers. Poor road surfaces increase the dangers to all road users and increase the damage inflicted upon our vehicles. Sadly, the powers that be choose to spend their time and money focusing on speed limit reductions and enforcement that have no discernable impact on road safety. Even as we speak, there is a campaign afoot to reduce the speed limit on rural roads to 50mph. Given that the majority of road traffic accidents on rural roads occur at speeds below 50mph or above 60mph, this change will make no difference to accident statistics. Rural roads will likely be difficult to police anyway, unless (as I suspect) the change is just an excuse to bang up a load more speed cameras. All this limit change will do is cost money and ruin our landscape. At the moment rural roads are by default set at National Speed Limit (60mph for car or motorbike), whereas if they are set at 50mph, there will need to be vast numbers of speed limit signs installed. This represents a vast expense and an unnecessary blight on our beautiful countryside. In most cases, the roads themselves dictate the naturally safe speed limit and this is often well below 60mph. But I digress…
The Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA) believes there to be more than 1.5million potholes in need of repair on UK roads. This figure has been dramatically affected by the recent cold weather, and is only likely to increase as winters become more extreme, and funding for road maintenance continues to be cut. As with many things in life, prevention is far cheaper than the cure. This is certainly true in the case of road re-surfacing, where basic re-surfacing costs about £14 per square metre, whereas full reconstruction costs a whopping £70.
How much does the government net from road tax? £47billion! More than enough to maintain our road networks in exemplary condition and vastly reduce the number of road deaths and accidents as a result. The problem of course is that most of this money goes nowhere near the roads.
When will you sit up and take notice of the sad state of neglect of our rural roads? Will it be before you round that corner on your bike only to be met with a giant pothole that sends you and your bike sliding down the road or into oncoming traffic? Will it be before you hit that broken surface in your car and are unable to brake effectively causing a collision with another road user?
Why is the transport network so low on the agenda?
Report potholes at the proper bikers site, http://www.fillthathole.org.uk/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/8599513.stm