Millietant, the lazy assholes was very tongue in cheek, but driving on the UK motorway networks for me Usually M1/M6 /M25. Propbaly the busiest road networks in Europe. The number of times one spends stopped and you look at what is supposed to be going on all I ever seem to notice is the workforce standing talking.
You obviously are in the game so know more than I would ever pretend to know about road construction and maintainence.
To actually say that the rest of Europe do not abide by safety legislation I think is a bit like me saying lazy assholes. Perhaps the rest of EU has the safety thing right and as a rule do not see the need for 5 miles of traffic cones while some one replaces a section of armco barrier. While I do appreciate that the work force needs to be protected and should have a safe working environment to carry out repairs we do overkill with cones.
Concerning how roads are maintained certainly here in Spain to me is better than the UK. I travel a on the AP23/A23 which runs from Valencia up the centre of Spain to Zaragoza and beyond. It is toll free, and is starting to get a bit tired now. What they have been doing is sections North bound, were it is really getting bad. They relay sections maybe 100/150 mtrs at a stretch , job done in a couple of days, very little disruption to traffic flow, I will admit that there is nowhere near the volume of traffic on that road as to any of our UK M/ways but they do crack on. Last time I used it was Christmas and I noticed that heading south bound they have now started to resurface very long sections now. Again though traffic still keeps moving but as said volume is much less than UK. I see the sense of what they are doing, being winter time the traffic volume heading south is even less as the tourist season has finished. To me there thinking is get the work done asap so the delays during summer months is reduced when the traffic starts flowing in greater numbers for the tourists heading back. I expect that next year they will relay the North bound carriage ways.
Surley one of the problems in the UK is that of funding for road repairs construction??Why after all UK road tax is one of the highest in Europe. I pay €50 a year, that amount is not paid into the national coffers as it is in the UK. it is paid into my local area athourity. I suspect that the road fund licencing fee paid in the UK is a form of stealth tax used by the government and likely as not very little of it is used for road contruction/maintainence. If that is the case it is wrong, maybe they should adopt the same system as they do in Spain.
One thing I would do in the UK is all foreign registered lorries and cars should pay a toll charge based on milage travelled inthe UK. This would not be hard to setup, everyone stumps up a minimum toll fee of £100 for wagons and £50 for cars. The oddometer reading can be taken at the entry port while checking in and again when departing if a wagon has only covered say 200 miles he gets a refund of say 30% and the same for cars also a reducing % for more miles travelled. This may sound expensive but for me to travel from Calais to Bordeaux via toll roads is about €35/40. I am sure folk will get the jist of what I mean.
You say that roads in the UK are /were of a better quality contruction at the outset than a lot of EU roads , perhaps the fact that they are /were the UK is paying a price today. I would say this that when the UK went on Motorway construction they were very short sighted, okay it was what 60 years ago when we started building motorways? why oh why did they not decide then that a minimum of three or four carraiage ways should have been the standard. If they had done that we would have been able to do road maintainence better and cheaper in the long run.
We need to start moving more heavy traffic off the roads now. There is no reason that a lot of frieght cannot be shipped around the coast or better use of the rail network be utilised, especially during night time. Most of Northern Europe has a terrific canal network system. We used to have one as well, same as the rail network system was extensive but we let that rundown also, thankyou Lord/Doctor Beeching.
I am on a roll here , who was the minister for transport at the time motorway construction started? Ernest Marples? would that have been the same Marples as in Marples Ridgeway? didn't they build roads way back in the 50's
I could go on and I am sure many have said what the feck is he smoking lol.
I do think that road maintainence in the UK could learn a lot from how the job is done on mainland Europe.
