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£60m needed to fix our crumbling roads
Reporter: JANICE BARKER
Date online: 09 August 2010
Council earmarks £10m over four years
Oldham’s crumbling roads need £60 million of repairs to bring them all up to top condition.
Every year the council spends £1.7 million for highway claims for slips, trips and falls, and pothole and road defects, and only has £1.3 million for everyday repairs.
The harsh winter last year made things worse — it had to increase pothole gangs from one to six to get over the worst of the damage.
Now the council has agreed to spend £10 million over the next four years, to start to bring roads up to average condition compared with the whole of Greater Manchester.
The spending was approved at the last council meeting and the details have now been made public.
The money is from what the council describes as “prudential borrowing” and is part of a £23 million capital spending scheme.
The report shows that the number of local unclassified roads which fell into the red category (those in the worst condition) steadily increased and are now almost a quarter of the total.
Over a third of footpaths and 8 per cent of A-roads are also rated as red.
Roads which are still classed as amber, but steadily deteriorating, are getting worse at a rate of 4 per cent a year.
Manchester Road, Middleton Road and Ripponden Road are the first A-roads suggested for repairs.
But surveys, visual inspections and complaints from the public and councillors, plus the number of requests for Pothole Mole — the council’s rapid response repair team — will also be used to decide priority.
Schedules will also be checked against other work on retaining walls, school safety zones and by utility companies to make sure the new surfaces stay undisturbed for as long as possible.
To report a pothole ring 0161-770 1685 or email pothole.mole@oldham.gov.uk
When a report is called in outside normal office hours, the details will be taken by the council’s First Response staff and passed on to the unit.
Comments
Don't worry, the planned Metrolink chaos will stop the traffic so you won't be going fast enough to worry about pot holes.
All this money wasted on Metrolink would have fixed the roads up.
Lorries call a lot of damage and there no chance of any of them being taken of Oldhams roads when we have a tram track instead of a railway line.
Tescos is moving to more rail based transport to it warehouse hubs, and what they do is copied by others. They won't be able to that in Oldham.
If they had done proper repairs the first time, they wouldn't have to keep coming back to do the same ones over again. That would mean it only costs half as much.
Middleton Rd? It is being resurfaced ATM and there are a lot of roads in a helluva worse stat of repair than that one.
Motorist's pay billions of pounds a year via road fund licencing and the huge tax on petrol and diesel yet so little is given back to maintain the road network. Where does this money actually go?
Timberwolf the money goes on inept partnerships like the one in oldham (unity) that is now sending out maps of areas where they want to put zebra crossing and more calming things, put an x on the spot and hey a zebra appears... MAGIC. Next will be payment for parking on the roads outside your house its coming
Ripponden Road has to be top priority, then Lees Road/Oldham Road all the way to Greenfield Station.
Some major strengthening work needs to be done for the new Tesco at Greenfield, the roads won't cope with artics.
Perhaps oldham Council should have got Tesco to invest in loading gear at the marina so non perishable goods can be brought by canal??
prodriver, even though i am against the tesco's idea the excuse of the roads being unable to handle the artics is a flimsy one.
greenfield as with many other villages has had heavy industrial pasts which involved large artics delivering and transporting goods.
greenfield even was the base for two articulated haulage firms with barrets and butterworths!
one area of concern i have is the retaining wall behind greenfield station supporting the road, this has started moving and needs looking at.
£10m over four years won't make a dent (pardon the pun)in the road surface repair situation. Leaving the repairs until the area has become dangerous is the wrong approach. Over the last couple of years millions of pounds have been paid out in compensation. They'd have been better spent on the roads.
I noticed tandle hill road and surrounding area has been repaired and finished for the last 2 months.Nobody has even been to mark the bad areas of Sholver and I bet none of the other estats have been masrked either.Ripponden road is a joke and will never improve whilst articulated lorries use it as a short cut to the M62.They are dangerous especially where the road has been narrowed through Moorside and Watersheddings.Keep them on the bypass and mororways.
Have Your Say
how much money in the past 10 years has been wasted on traffic calming, speed bumps, traffic islands, white hatched areas, coloured road paints, anti skid surfaces and bus lanes?
the road surface should be the number one priority before any of these wasteful things above are implimented!
mabey then the massive bill for damage to cars would be much smaller. also several accidents on corners might have been prevented as they've been down to poor road surfaces.
By fedupoldhamer @ 09/08/2010 12:27:28