I recently emailed a local council regarding the state of one of its roads. Last year this had been resurfaced using the method of basically lying loose stones on the top and letting the traffic flatten it down. The road is unbelievably noisy to drive over, always has loose stones, and I have suffered several stone chips as a result.
Am I being unfair in thinking that this surface is absolutely not suitable and cannot understand why standard tarmac surface was not laid. Obviously cost cutting exercise and total disregard of how it affects people's vehicles. This is a stretch of road, probably about a mile long, that accesses the M8.
Here is the reply I got:
You are correct that the carriageway was resurfaced recently which was using a surface dressing treatment at the end of July 2017. Unfortunately this treatment has failed, however rest assured the road is in a reasonable condition to travel on.
The road is continually being monitored and swept when necessary to remove any loose material from the carriageway.
The works were originally carried out under satisfactory conditions at the time as recommended in the Industry Design Guide for Surface Dressing and completed on 31st July 2018. The road was inspected immediately after the works were completed and was totally satisfactory. The rates of spread of the bitumen and chippings were good and there was not much evidence of excess chippings at the time.
However, there was very heavy and substantial rainfall later that afternoon and into the evening which may have had an effect on the dressing. There were also several substantial showers for the remainder of the week at various times. If the weather had been fair and dry for a couple of weeks afterwards, then the dressing would have had a better chance of success as the process relies on secondary compaction of the chips by passing traffic. The road was swept several times immediately after laying the chips as this process is required to take off the excess chippings to allow the carriageway markings to be reinstated. Roads and Transportation were continually monitoring the condition of all of the sites in the programme since completion and all of them seemed satisfactory in the months immediately afterwards, although one of the other sites was slightly heavily chipped.
However, around the end of October and into November, the surfacing on XXXXX Road was probably beginning to lose more chips than was desirable so we were keeping a closer eye on it at this time. During the month of December the road continued to lose chips from the surface so we arranged to meet with the contractor early in the New Year to discuss possible remedial action. Arrangements were made for the road to be swept on a continual basis as and when necessary until the road ceased to give up it’s loose chips.
As surface dressing is a seasonal process, remedial works can only be carried out between the months of May to August as recommended in the Industry Design Guide for Surface Dressing, when weather conditions are suitable. Therefore, we’ll need to wait until then for the works to be done. The remedial works will be carried out again under full road closure but with access to the distillery, and at the contractor’s expense, so there will be no additional cost to the Council.
|
Road Surface Dressing new
Road Surface Dressing new
