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Farewell potholes? UK team invents self-healing road surface

theguardian.com

21–30 of 78 posts

Re: Farewell potholes? UK team invents self-healing road surface

#21
post #2

That’s good news, but why are the roads in the UK so bad to start with? Is it correct to say that roads are funded from a tax on fuel sales?

Yes, fuel duty does bring in a lot of money, but it doesn’t go directly into fixing the roads—it generally goes into the government’s general budget. Local councils who are responsible for fixing the roads have been underfunded for years and is normally the area that gets squeezed the most. The British weather doesn’t help too with constant rain and freezing winters…

No specific tax in any country funds things directly. It's just a ploy to get people to accept new taxes. Every tax is whatever % it is of the global tax revenue and that's it, and if you know what a tax dollar is used for you can look at the overall budget of expenses.

For example, if I say I will create a tax to protect the children, exclusively used to fund orphanages, you go oh man that sounds great. But you already have a huge budget and you already have existing taxes you could've raised for that. So the only reason you do it like this is optics and so that later you can repurpose the tax. Reading a bit about historical reasons for some taxes is a good way to learn this.

Specific taxes like this can and do modulate demand and can adjust the costs to the actual users, but very rarely for funding isn't it only a sleight of hand.

Re: Farewell potholes? UK team invents self-healing road surface

#22
post #19

I live in Hungary and the roads here are incredibly bad with millions of potholes. Hot summers and cold winters doesn’t help either. But what I noticed that if the asphalt has higer mixture of stones (usually they use basalt here) then there are virtually almost no potholes. It’s more loud as the surface is more rough but by my layman experience it’s much more durable. Pure asphalt roads with very little stone conten…

More stones also make asphalt more slippery in wet conditions don't they?

Re: Farewell potholes? UK team invents self-healing road surface

#23

> The material could be scaled up for use on British roads in a couple of years, the researchers believe. As per usual these optimistic solutions are inhibited by cost. All municipalities that I’ve lived in have ignored potholes until the complainants become a choir. It is always cheaper this way.

I single-handedly got the mayor of my small town to fill in a bunch of potholes on a road leading to my parents place. I have an old car and while the suspension is great, it's destroyed the bottom of my car and multiple valences costing me a lot since it sits so low. I started calling the mayor every single day and we ended up talking for a few hours.

Nothing got done until I distributed flyers and went knocking on every single home along my route to my parents on that shitty road and got everyone to call him whenever they could.

The road got fixed and has stayed that way. The grand irony is that the hill is so steep that the only way I managed to get up it was with those potholes. Now I have to take the long 5km route around every time because my car can't make it up this smooth dirt road in the winter now as my car is sub-1000 kilos. I think the gas and lost-parts cost has now evened out at least!

Re: Farewell potholes? UK team invents self-healing road surface

#24
post #22
post #19

I live in Hungary and the roads here are incredibly bad with millions of potholes. Hot summers and cold winters doesn’t help either. But what I noticed that if the asphalt has higer mixture of stones (usually they use basalt here) then there are virtually almost no potholes. It’s more loud as the surface is more rough but by my layman experience it’s much more durable. Pure asphalt roads with very little stone conten…

More stones also make asphalt more slippery in wet conditions don't they?

I think it's the opposite, this kind of asphalt has very rough surface.

Re: Farewell potholes? UK team invents self-healing road surface

#25
In Italy (Perugia) not only huge and dangerous potholes (is a disaster overall) but sidewalks maintenance is pretty much abandoned as well. I drive a motorcycle and instead of paying attention to driving I have to put considerable effort looking at the road because I know that if a drive over one of those I'll end up in the ground for sure.

Re: Farewell potholes? UK team invents self-healing road surface

#26
post #20

> The material could be scaled up for use on British roads in a couple of years, the researchers believe. As per usual these optimistic solutions are inhibited by cost. All municipalities that I’ve lived in have ignored potholes until the complainants become a choir. It is always cheaper this way.

Cheaper only because you're subsidizing the cost of the road (by delaying maintenance) from the pocket of the road users which will now collectively have to do maintenance on the car slightly sooner on average, with some people getting the brunt of it if they have an actual accident that requires immediate repair. In some worse cases it even makes a road much slower to traverse in order to deal with the constant bump…

That's a very weird use of "subsidizing" there. The corect view is that the local government is subsidizing the maintenance of cars by investing some of its money in making the roads better. Government subsidies like this can absolutely be important and useful, especially if a majority of the population drives, but they should always be looked at conservatively and minimized when possible.

Re: Farewell potholes? UK team invents self-healing road surface

#27
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, it's not a hypothecated tax. It all goes into the general fund. Same for vehicle tax. In my (mostly uninformed) opinion, a lot of road maintenance was outsourced to the private sector on long (like 20+ years) contracts in the 2000s (2004 for 25 years in my town). Predictable result is predictable.

Council grants from central govt cut ~40% during austerity too. Pothole fixing and road resurfacing are such an easy choice to cut from budgets because the effect is indirect and isn't immediately seen. People would notice very quickly if their bins weren't being collected.

> ”People would notice very quickly if their bins weren't being collected.”

This was a constant problem at my London council. They collected our rubbish bin reliably, but never our council-supplied recycling bin. Eventually we found out that the rules had changed and recycling had to be put in specially marked clear plastic bags, but the bags were almost impossible to get. You literally had to go to the local library on a specific day of the week to get told “no sorry, the bags didn’t come in this week, try again next week”. They couldn’t make it any more difficult or kafkaesque! Eventually we just learned to take our recycling down the street to an estate building and dump it in their bins.

And at the same time this was going on, the same council was spending money on billboards and bus stop advertising encouraging people to recycle!

Tower Hamlets, you are the absolute worst!

Re: Farewell potholes? UK team invents self-healing road surface

#28

> The material could be scaled up for use on British roads in a couple of years, the researchers believe. As per usual these optimistic solutions are inhibited by cost. All municipalities that I’ve lived in have ignored potholes until the complainants become a choir. It is always cheaper this way.

I single-handedly got the mayor of my small town to fill in a bunch of potholes on a road leading to my parents place. I have an old car and while the suspension is great, it's destroyed the bottom of my car and multiple valences costing me a lot since it sits so low. I started calling the mayor every single day and we ended up talking for a few hours. Nothing got done until I distributed flyers and went knocking on…

Could the mayor have been better focusing their time and efforts on broader issues, rather than just to stop a bunch of people from repeatedly calling him?

Re: Farewell potholes? UK team invents self-healing road surface

#29
post #19

I live in Hungary and the roads here are incredibly bad with millions of potholes. Hot summers and cold winters doesn’t help either. But what I noticed that if the asphalt has higer mixture of stones (usually they use basalt here) then there are virtually almost no potholes. It’s more loud as the surface is more rough but by my layman experience it’s much more durable. Pure asphalt roads with very little stone conten…

Pretty bad for bikes though, and pushchairs.

Re: Farewell potholes? UK team invents self-healing road surface

#30

In Italy (Perugia) not only huge and dangerous potholes (is a disaster overall) but sidewalks maintenance is pretty much abandoned as well. I drive a motorcycle and instead of paying attention to driving I have to put considerable effort looking at the road because I know that if a drive over one of those I'll end up in the ground for sure.

To be fair, terrible roads might reduce accidents, reduce speeds, unnecessary vehicle usage, and turn the usual road rage into rage against the road, creating a bond between different drivers rather than antagonism.

And it's also a net positive for mechanics and parts manufacturers. Basically a win-win for society (except for drivers, ofc).

(partly /s and partly not, as I surprised myself realising how bad roads might actually have positives)

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