Potholes are now a conspiracy against drivers
As if HS2 was not a big enough scandal as it is, I am beginning to wonder about the money that was supposed to be freed up by the cancellation of its northern legs. Last October the Government announced that it was making £8 billion of pothole money available for road repairs – enough, supposedly, to resurface 5000 miles of road.
Where has this money gone? There is not much evidence of proactive pothole repair around my way – I can’t remember the roads being in a worse state. And it seems I am not imagining it either. The RAC received 27,205 calls to broken down cars disabled by pockmarked roads in the 12 months to the end of March.. That was an almost 10 per cent rise on the previous 12 months.
As the RAC suggests, this year’s mild winter ought to have been kind to the roads, as it is repeated freeze-thaw cycles which do the real damage. But then many of the worst holes have been there for years. Many don’t even appear on councils’ radars. Potholes have become a bit like shoplifting: highways authorities seem to set ever-higher thresholds before they could be bothered to tackle the problem.
Councils that will happily spend a fortune on blocking the roads with bollards, planters and kerbs, or even painting rainbow zebra crossings, start pleading poverty when it comes to the boring old business of keeping the road surface in good condition. Make the roads so awful to use, ruin the tyres and suspensions of people who drive along them, I guess they calculate, and drivers might start to seek alternative forms of transport. Except, that is, that cyclists are getting an even worse deal: for them a modest-sized pothole can easily cause serious damage.
Along with emptying the bins, repairing the roads is supposed to be one of the central functions of local government. Yet the failure to spend money properly on this cause is a symptom of how far they have drifted from their original purpose. They can hardly say that motorists are not paying their fair whack: councils have jacked up parking charges and are forever dreaming up ways to fine them for minor traffic infringements. Motorists – or at least those drivers of petrol and diesel cars – and also contributing billions every year to central government in fuel duty. They have become cash cows for general expenditure, while the roads are neglected.
We can’t rely on Rod Stewart to repair the nation’s potholes entirely on his own; two years ago the then 77 year old singer was spotted repairing a pothole near his Essex home himself after the council failed to take action. And nor, evidently, is it good enough simply to shove extra money to councils.
The Government will have to order them to retrain their diversity officers in tarmac work.
