Pot Holes in North Somerset

by NSomPot

26 Mar 2007

If you ask the local council why the potholes are so bad in North Somerset they give you two answers. Firstly, the official version from the Council is that they are in the top quartile of road repairing authorities. All I can say is God help the residents and drivers in the bottom quartile areas wherever they are ! The unofficial version is that the pothole in question has to be a certain depth before they can repair them. One assumes that this criteria is life threatening judging by the rediculous state of the roads.
I can think of many roads in the North Somerset area where this existing situation will not only cause severe damage to cars, motobikes and cycles but is on safety grounds aloneis seriously life threatening. Indeed one should be observing the traffic in front of you or indeed oncoming traffic but most of us have got our eyes firmly fixed on the black stuff a few feet in front of us to ensure that tyres, suspension and steering are not impaired by the cavenous holes in the road.
To make matters even worse the so called work gangs that go around pretending to fix these craters do little more than throw in tarmac chippings and attempt to achieve an even surface with the surrounding good areas. This patchwork of repairs offers in many cases no more than 2 to 3 weeks restbite before the same holes appear again with additionally previously good areas erupting around the freshly made repair. There is no attempt made to seal the new repair with the old resulting in ingress of water which further erodes the repair in record time.
Seriously though what is happening to our roads and the repairs throughout the UK. Anyone would think we are a third world country. Most of the roads in North Cyprus are better than those of the UK -I know have driven on them.
Come on Gordon spend some of the tax revenue where it is most needed -the road and transport infrastructure.Or is this a method of actively discouraging road use by stealth so that we can all become that little bit greener !!

Yours

A Frustrated Driver (and many others too)
North Somerset