A new solution for potholes
For all on the road, particularly for those of us on two wheels, potholes now seem to be a constant fact of life – and it’s not a welcome one, as anyone who has had the misfortune to launch themselves into one will know.
This time of year, when wintery conditions and flooding can persist through the spring, it seems that new mini sinkholes appear every day, and often the reaction from local authorities is to simply pop a traffic cone in the hole.
The AA recently estimated that there are £11 billion worth of potholes across the UK currently requiring repairs.
JCB has come up with a new machine – and here at OBM we admit we do like a big bit of machinery – that can fix potholes quickly, cheaply and, just as importantly, permanently. The PotholePro can repair a pothole in less than eight minutes, four times quicker than standard methods and at half the cost of current solutions.
It is equipped with a modified Simex planer, with integrated dust suppression, mounted on the machine’s rear skid steer hitch. The planer is 600mm wide, with up to 1.3m of side-shift adjustment. This allows the operator to plane a full carriageway from the kerb without repositioning the machine.
Hydraulic tilt and depth control provide a consistent depth for larger patches. The machine’s TAB two-piece boom is fitted with the
JCB ‘Multi-tool,’ mounted on an X12 Steelwrist tilt-rotator. The ‘Multi-tool’ comprises of two attachments, a dedicated hydraulic cropper and a sweeper/bucket, while the 600mm cropping tool eliminates the need for floor saws or hydraulic breakers, providing a squared off, clean cut to the repair area.
The operator then rotates the boom head to bring a 1.2m wide sweeper/bucket into use to clean up the pothole area, eliminating the requirement for a separate sweeper truck. Material lifted by the sweeper/bucket can be loaded directly for removal.
The PotholePro has been in trials on roads in Stoke-on-Trent for some months, during which it completed 51 road repair jobs in 20 days, which would have normally taken a team of up to six workers 63 days. The savings in time and labour hours are impressive.
Councillor Daniel Jellyman, Stoke-on-Trent City Council cabinet member for infrastructure, regeneration and heritage, said he had seen a 700% increase in productivity during the trials – and the initial outlay for local authorities could be more than repaid by the decrease in damage to vehicles.
Councils receive a request to fix a pothole every 46 seconds, and more than £8.1 million was paid out in compensation to drivers last year for vehicle damage caused by potholes.
And anything that makes roads safer we support hole-heartedly!