Stafford in Staffordshire

by ElectMayor

02 Mar 2011

In Stafford the same potholes appear each year. But the repair rate seems to have stalled.

The car parks are the preserve of Stafford Borough Council and the ones for Sainsburys and North Walls (shoppers and Gatehouse Theatre users) have yet to be repaired. The pot holes can easily swallow wheels of even the tallest 4x4. But yet more than pot holes they are fully rips in the line of travel and more like wholesale failure of the road surface.

The roads are the preserve of Staffordshire County Council that now has a 30million pound great glass palace of huge offices that covered a Borough car park behind Stafford high street.

Pot holes that remain winter after winter after winter are on the main estate road of John Amery Drive, especially on the descent from the speed bumps.

The main A449 Wolverhampton Road seems to have the same pot holes year after year after year, especially by bus stops heading into town after passing John Amery Drive.

I just cannot recall how many pot holes lurk in the town centre. I spend just as much time looking at the road surface as round about me in Stafford.

The best is the country road leading off Beaconside by The Common that leads down to the municipal tip past the glue factory. They are whoppers as wide and as deep as you like.

One great pot hole lurked on the road from Stafford to the village of Woodseaves on a left hand bend that could not be seen because it was getting dark and there was fog in amongst the forest. But then it was not so much a pot hole as a failure of the side of the road to be anything more than the mud of the forest floor.

Stafford is a place where I dare not pass a cyclist riding in the gutter, as my memory of where the permanent pot holes lurk is not always sharp by my age now.

Going beyond 30 or 40 mph is not wise in Stafford.

What I tend to lose is the wheel trim and so have been fortunate till now, but I am sure that many a Stafford resident has come acropper in this town of many many deep failures of the road surface rather than mere pot holes.

But it is the car parks that amaze me. Nothing has been done to repair them for many years now. Odd that. We have a local election of Stafford Borough Council this May.

The Staffordshire County Council elections are not till 2013 so that might explain the roads.

My personal website might have photographs when I can get out and about (I'm disabled):

www.staffordshire-vote-english.info

about Stafford and Stafford Borough area.