Roddy Graham’s Blog: 12 June 2008

Bumpy training

Ever since I’ve been training for next week’s London to Paris Bike Ride in aid of Marie Curie Cancer Care, I’ve taken an inordinate interest in potholes.

The jarring you get when you drive over the things is nothing compared to the shock waves transmitted from the seat post into the nether regions!

Fortunately, I’ve avoided the really big ones which can cause extensive damage to bike, body and pride.

What I’ve observed over recent weeks is the proliferation of new ones. I always understood that you got them after the frosts of winter but for them to start erupting in the spring seemed new to me.

Then I thought about it as I was riding along. They’ve been springing up since we’ve had all those heavy rainfalls. If rain can break up the road surface, it doesn’t say much for the standard of construction and surfacing of our roads today.

This is backed by a newly-published report from the Department for Transport entitled ‘Transport Statistics Bulletin Road Conditions in England 2007’, which presents grim reading. It supports my on-bike insight that our unclassified roads are deteriorating fast.

Potholes were found approximately every 200 metres on some roads while the worst roads where identified as having suffered, I quote: “whole carriageway major deterioration”.

Don’t you just like the phraseology.

These accounted for almost half the cases of deterioration and encompassed cracking, deformation, loss of supporting aggregate and defective patches, the latter quite inexcusable as I have referred to in an earlier ‘black holes’ blog on the subject.

By contrast, the motorway network needing maintenance stood at around a constant 6% according to the DfT while trunk roads have improved by 2% to 5% by 2007.

No doubt DfT will point an accusatory finger at local councils but meanwhile it is we poor-suffering drivers and cyclists that cop out.

If skyrocketing fuel bills are not enough, we’re now faced with repair costs to wheels, tyres, and in some cases, suspensions. At a very minimum, many vehicles are having their wheel tracking thrown out of alignment by the constant pounding on poor road surfaces with resultant uneven tyre wear.

Just to put the icing to the cake, pardon the pun, the DfT report goes on to identify that while road surfaces on motorways have good anti-skid properties, the skid resistance on a quarter of other major roads was brought into question.