Posted: Tuesday 18th July 2017
We’ve got 3000 miles of some of the country's busiest roads with millions of car trips and three times the national average number of lorry journeys. The effect of heavy traffic, severe weather and wear and tear causes a lot of damage to the road surface. It’s a big job to keep them in good condition.
Prevention is better than cure and that’s certainly true of potholes. Last year we resurfaced almost two million square metres of road and that will have prevented many potholes before they had the chance to form.
While we much prefer to prevent potholes forming, when they do occur we have a good process in place to deal with them.
Ollie Sullivan, Local Network Technician, explains how our highways teams fix potholes.
“I generally pick up defects from the fault reporting system on my tablet. I visit the sites to assess the severity of the fault. If it meets the criteria and needs attention I mark up the area with red paint ready for the crew and to let the public know it’s being dealt with.”
A pothole which meets the criteria will be repaired in 20 working days. If it’s located on an A, B or C road it will be done in 5 working days.
Ollie said: “Once on site we cut out all of the marked area, take out all the edging around the pothole and generally prepare the section. We use a sticky substance called a `tack coat’ on the excavated section for extra adhesion. We fill with asphalt and compact it using a compressor plate.
Our teams of inspectors check public roads on a regular basis and identify more than 20,000 highway defects a year. Around 4,000 are potholes that need an urgent response because of their size, depth and location. The most urgent are filled temporarily for safety before getting a full repair.
Those that don’t need an urgent response are logged on our system and checked regularly. This helps us to decide which stretches of road to resurface so we can provide a long term fix and provide value for money. We have a lot of miles to cover so if you see any potholes that aren’t marked please tell us.
Report highway faults on our website.
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