ROAD RAGE

I wholeheartedly agree with your readers regarding ‘smart’ motorways (‘Motorway Madness’, Your Letters, November 2017). The western bypass in Newcastle was ‘upgraded’, resulting in more than two years of misery, jams and delays; the project also overran. Now it is finally open and, thanks to a 50mph limit, there has been no improvement in transit times – if anything, they’ve got worse!

Meanwhile, the much vaunted A1M improvements are more than six months late and we have only just seen the speed limits removed from the 15-mile section of the road that has been finished for a year. However, a part of this has now been restricted again while the ‘new’ carriageway is repaired.

On the subject of road repairs and potholes, these days any holes are patched, but the joint between new and old is not sealed with bitumen. As a result, you end up with a larger pothole and another repair job in very short order. I’d be interested in what the road repairers’ trade body thinks of this technique. Ed Dinning