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news
Gurt pothole (CC BY 2.0 licensed image by Brett Jordan:Flickr)Devon County Council considers enlisting volunteer pothole-fixers
Live in Devon and fancy fixing potholes in your spare time? Cash-strapped Devon County Council is considering enlisting 'road wardens' to repair potholes in their spare time, but the idea has been described as "absurd" by the RAC.
The council says it wants to save £3.4m by next year, according to Austin Macauley of localgov.co.uk
Road wardens would operate like the county's existing volunteer snow wardens who help keep roads clear. They would fix small potholes, carry out other minor repairs and look after roadside weeding and cleaning road signs.
The idea is only at discussion stage at the moment. The council says it is liaising with town and parish councils about rolling out the wardens, who would be trained by the council.
Roger Geffen of cycling charity CTC is sceptical about the idea, though we suggested that bands of cyclists patching their local roads could at least ensure their favourite routes gott fixed, and had a big incentive to do a good job.
He thinks the idea of patching roads instead of fixing them properly is the underlying flaw in the idea.
Geffen said: "Even now, with paid staff doing the work, an awful lot of patch-repairing is done poorly, and falls apart pretty rapidly.
"Local authorities really do need to badger Government for the funding that would enable them to shift from reactive pothole-filling towards properly planned road maintenance – in other words, carrying out full surface repairs before the road’s subsurface starts falling apart, rather than patching it up afterwards."
Geffen says that both the Audit Commission and the Government have recognised that preventive repairs are far more cost-effective than reactive patching.
Lack of funding is stopping local authorities from switching from ‘reactive’ to ‘proactive’ maintenance because of the backlog of repairs, and cyclists suffer more than motorised road users as a result.
As well as saving money in the long run, Geffen says there's another benefit to proper road repairs.
"Whenever New York’s Department of Transport plans to resurface a road, they ask themselves: 'Could this road be redesigned to be more cycle friendly while we’re at it?' By systematically linking their cycling infrastructure and planned road maintenance programmes, they have delivered some fantastic cycle facilities, in a very cost-effective manner.
"Plymouth Council has taken up the idea too, so Devon Council could easily take a leaf out of their book. CTC is strongly urging other local authorities to adopt this approach as well, and for the Government to recommend it in the forthcoming Cycling and Walking Delivery Plan."
Potholes continue to be a major source of injuries and equipment damage for cyclists.
Geffen added: "Around 12% of the injury damages claims pursued by CTC’s solicitors on behalf of our members are due to maintenance defects. Imagine the outcry if the same were true for drivers."
The council also proposes to save £183,000 by reducing snow clearing and not restocking or maintaining grit bins and to save a further £700,000 by only funding grass cutting to maintain visibility at junctions and the inside of bends.
Councillor Stuart Hughes, Devon County Council cabinet member for highway management and flood prevention, said: “The County Council’s reduced budgets means that every service area of the Council is affected, including highways. By 2016/17 we will have 60% less funding for highway maintenance and traffic management than in 2009/10, which presents a big challenge for the service and will mean a huge change from what has previously been delivered."
RAC spokesman Simon Williams told localgov.co.uk: "Getting potholes fixed is without doubt a top priority, but getting people to do it themselves is perhaps just a bit too enterprising. Councils have been given extra money by the Government to repair our roads so we would hope they would able to get fully trained workers to do a professional job rather than training volunteers."
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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26 comments
Can we please stop this ridiculous idea that cycling causes no wear and tear to the road?
Personally I have probably removed several Kg of some of our finest road surfaces from my limbs over the years.
One of the main problems is the reinstatement of the road surface after utiliy companies and the like have been digging up the road. They spend more money fighting claims by Local Authorities than they spend on fixing the roads!
"Because firstly, VED is based on emissions, if we were charged according to the existing rules, we'd be zero rated."
Not entirely true, methane is a greenhouse gas, and I've been known to f*rt occasionally while riding...
I'm pro scrapping ved and sticking it into the price of fuel. people who drive more pay more, and if you have a bigger heavy car then you pay even more. I drive 8,000 miles a year why should I pay more than captain sandals driving 30,000 a year in their blue motion golf? The notion of this Co2 lark is pointless. its a tax on the less well off. If you can afford £20,000 for a new car with a c02 of 98 then great for you but many can't and get penalised for driving an older car with a higher co2 whilst some twat minces around in their prius with the deluded thinking they are saving the planet.
Plus we save all the management of ved, and the cost of the police and legal system prosecuting offenders.....to me its a no brainer.
And cyclists.....hey, its still free!
Agreed. At least with a fuel tax it would be fair and representative. But that means common sense and it's not something any political party is blessed with (let alone them knowing and understanding how the "common man" lives).
Trying to follow your argument here...
Get rid of VED, put it on fuel, OK.
The more you drive, the more you pay , OK
You drive 8k miles and Cap'n Sandals drives 30k, but you pay more than him. ? In VED, I suppose so. Not overall in tax, not by a long way (fuel is 70-80% tax already). 4 or 5 tanks of fuel will soon make up that difference.
I don't understand how it is a tax on the poor. If you accept that VED contributes to the costs of pollution (i.e. respiratory damage), then older cars are more polluting (esp diesels with the emissions of PM10s etc) so there should be a cost associated. Maybe you don't, but it goes into the general taxation pool which deals with that sort of thing.
The management of VED : part of that has always been to ensure that cars on the road have valid MOT and insurance, which is the gate to getting VED. TBF, now we have it all done through ANPR, perhaps we could forget about VED and link just to the MOT / insurance database.
I think you've answered your own question.
So the more polluting cars should have no additional and proportional costs (disincentives) to them?
The point being made was that it is a tax on those who cannot afford new, emissions-friendly vehicles (ie the poor who buy second-hand and don't have much choice in whether the vehicle is up to 2014 emissions standards).
The argument was not about whether or not people should pay for more if they have polluting vehicles.
I don't think you can disentangle the one from the other, unless you are suggesting that two drivers both using the same amount of fuel, one producing a very much larger amount of 'human health affecting' pollutants than the other should be taxed identically. I guess that is a position you could take, although I don't agree.
As an aside - I've never bought a new car, but that doesn't mean I don't have some level of choice over what I buy.
The only argument I have against paying 'road tax' is as a road user we are just that, using the road. Regardless of our Co2 or the fact bikes do not cause any wear to a road, time itself takes its toll on tarmac & we benefit from their existence. Whilst the current VED is not applicable to cyclists and is just another form of taxation going into the big pot, I would not object to paying a small amount if and only if the money went directly to road repair. I would rather have this than whinging about the crap roads all the time.
I'm not against this. If some people have the time to take this sort of work in the spirit of helping the community then great. It must be restricted to local and rural roads, not repairing major A roads. Plenty of people with time on their hands who might actually enjoy this sort of thing.
That said, it shouldn't be necessary. perhaps more fines from people driving whilst texting (should be at least £2000) should go directly to road repairs.
Is there anything in place to protect a council if contracted professional company that has repaired a road badly? There should be some sort of guarantee that its going to last a certain amount of time. this might introduce some improved quality.
They kind of do, the money from fines goes into CG, which is then spread around.
There should be a formal contract etc., but I can imagine the number of caveats within that would make it next to impossible, after all you need to prove it was bad workmanship not some 'extraordinary circumstance'
I have never heard anything so stupid.
1. Road tax does not exist.
2. I already pay for the roads through other taxation.
3. My bike makes no impact what so ever on road wear.
I've no issues with paying 'tax' under the current rules though, and as my bike emits no CO2 I'll be paying £0.
Also it starts with road tax as appeasement, then drivers still moan, so then comes insurance, then comes licensing and so on...
I'd rather keep my fiver on principle.
if cyclists paid based on current rules, where 100g/km is the zero rate, they'd be due a rebate of around £150-£200 a year if you extrapolated the graph
DIY SOS ………...
How about just getting those scrounging good for nothing cyclists to pay some road tax?
I, like many other cyclists would happily pay road tax. My wife's 1 ltr Aygo costs £20 to tax, so on this (pro-rata) measure we should only have to pay a small percentage of this. Paying Road Tax for a bicycle would not only inject a smallish bit of dosh towards road repairs but more importantly would give us some credibility and finally prevent the age old shout from other road users "get off the road as you don't pay road tax" Some will disagree and it would be complicated to introduce (children's bikes etc) but hey, for a fiver a year why not give it a go!
But the roads you ride on are paid for through council tax not 'road tax'. That's why despite motorists continuing to pay VED, the roads have got worse. Because the council cannot raise the council tax.
If they are going to ask people to fix pot holes themselves why not ask them to cut the grass themselves instead. An amateur gardener can still cut grass but an amateur 'road warden' will make a hash job of road repairs.
Because firstly, VED is based on emissions, if we were charged according to the existing rules, we'd be zero rated.
Secondly, if we remove the 'road tax' argument from motorists's minds, they'll just replace it with another. It's an excuse to have a pop at us.
Don't be distracted, we don't and shouldn't pay any VED whatsoever.
I hear where you're coming from, but I fear unintended consequences.
So your generous offer of making an additional contribution may turn out to be less generous than you intended! Getting people onto bikes automatically saves money. There's less congestion, less pollution, less road wear, less call on the NHS. Any barrier to getting people cycling would be a negative. VED already uses zero rating in an attempt to influence behaviour. Perhaps it would be cost effective to pay people to cycle!
I can't imagine what could possibly go wrong.....oh wait...
In another ground-breaking idea from one Devon council, we are to be charged extra if we want our recycling bins emptied. They never think these things through...
You have got to love Devon; "The link road is not fit for purpose; it is dangerous and slow; which harms our economy. And Barnstaple is still the home of the traffic jam". Peter Heaton-Jones (prospective Conservative MP) he wants it turned into a dual carriageway
. Many people drive down this 'slow' link road at 100 mph+ Barnstaple has just had a £40M bridge complete with £80K (Cornish) stone sculpture 
(to stop traffic jams).
Because you would not want some poor dick-head driving at 100 mph to damage his low profile wheels/tyres would you?
Dualling this 30 mile road will cost the thick end of £1Bn but Devon CC has no money for road maintenance the roads are over grown, falling apart, flooding, but if a pothole appears in their beloved link road it is filled in the blink of an eye
Well, the new bridge is 8 years old now, y'know.
Actually, NDCC are really really quick at fixing potholes if you report them on fillthathole.org.uk
8 years..
No wonder there are proposals to build a new bridge
Well a new, new bridge...
I assume the existing road repairing workforce are unionised. They won't like this.
Probably not, council has probably subcontracted the work to Amey or similar and they just sub it out to who ever will do the job cheaply.