The UK’s potholes are driving us all round the bend
THE word potholing used to apply to those intrepid individuals who enjoy exploring caves. But now, thanks to the creaking infrastructure of modern Britain, the term could be widened to embrace almost anyone who ventures out on to our fractured roads. Dodging potholes has become one of our prime physical activities, filled with endless aggravation and risk.
The alarming scale of the problem was exposed this week by the annual study from the Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA), whose research showed that one in eight of Britain’s local roads – the equivalent of more than 24,000 miles – faces closure over the next 12 months without essential maintenance. Just as disturbingly, 20 per cent of highways have less than five years’ life remaining, up from 12 per cent only two years ago.
Politicians of all sides are fond of grand talk about modernisation and innovation yet our roads have been left to rot. Despite their crucial importance to Britain’s fabric they have been so badly neglected that they are a threat to both public safety and economic prosperity.
In its damning report the AIA also found that incredibly English roads are only resurfaced on average once every 92 years, while the estimated bill for the backlog of repairs is £9.3 billion and would take 14 years to clear at the current rate.
I have regularly experienced the pothole nightmare in my home county of Kent, where parts of the network are so riddled with craters that they have started to resemble the moon’s surface.
AT TIMES it feels as if a journey across the mosaic of widening voids requires the skills of a rally driver and the nerve of an Olympic downhill skier. A trip on the A2 along the coast towards London can be an odyssey of shuddering and juddering, with more bangs than a dodgem circuit.
The recent cold spells have aggravated the crisis but even before the Beast swept in from the East, Kent was in the grip of the pothole plague. A study last October about the county’s road network revealed that almost 15,000 potholes had been reported in 2016. It was calculated that the combined depth of all the craters was the equivalent of 167 double decker buses stacked on top of each other, or 10 times higher than the spire of Canterbury Cathedral.
Kent is hardly unique. The whole country is affected. According to other analyses, Surrey and Hampshire have fared even more badly. This month it was reported that in Gloucestershire 5,000 potholes have been reported since the beginning of the year, an increase of 55 per cent for the same period in 2017.
The buck-passers in the establishment might try to hide behind the big freeze as an excuse but they should not be allowed to evade blame so easily. The reality is that politicians have a direct responsibility for this mess because they have miserably failed to show sufficient concern for the upkeep of our roads.
The dire situation is a direct consequence of long-term financial neglect and warped political priorities. Essential road needs are being sacrificed to the vanity of more glamorous transport projects. While road surfaces are crumbling, money is being poured into the gigantic HS2 rail link, the soaring bill of which has reached more than £50 billion. Far more people use the roads than the railways yet motorists and cyclists are getting a raw deal.
According to the RAC Foundation think tank, English councils spent £934 million on routine road maintenance in the past financial year, down a third in real terms over the past eight years. Failure to tackle potholes is a central part of that political indifference.
In the past year, despite the accelerating deterioration, councils have filled in 1.5 million potholes compared with 2.7 million in 2015. The problem is all the more serious because of the huge increase in traffic over recent decades, which should mean the roads receive far greater political priority.
JUST after the war there were only two million vehicles on Britain’s highways. Today there are no fewer than 32 million. Even since 2000 there are an additional four million cars, partly because of the expansion of the population due to mass immigration and rising birthrates. But instead of devoting more resources to meet demand the politicians have been cutting back.
This is intolerable on so many levels. Badly maintained roads cause damage to cars, particularly tyres and suspensions, while they are also a major cause of injuries, even deaths.
Tragically the number of cyclists killed or seriously injured because of potholes has tripled in a decade. Moreover the decline in quality is bad for the economy since roads are the arteries that keep the system pumping. As Steve Gooding of the RAC Foundation puts it: “The road network is as much a vital utility as the energy, water and telecoms systems.”
The bitter irony is that motorists already contribute massive sums in taxation. Fuel duties raise around £28 billion a year and road tax brings in another £6 billion. Out of every pound spent by the consumer on petrol, 65p is grabbed by the Government. Yet less than a third of all the money squeezed out of drivers is actually devoted to the roads.
Given the dire state of the network, that is not just economically illiterate but a gross injustice. The pothole dodgers of Britain deserve better.
‘Motorists and cyclists are getting a raw deal’