I read recently complaints about pot holes, and numerous temporary traffic lights, holes in the road, diversion signs left around etc, I ask if this is true?
We have recently spent a week house hunting, covering 600 miles.
The roads were almost billiard-table smooth, pot holes and repairs almost non-existent. No temporary lights, the odd small repair, always cleared by evening, motorways, we only saw tree and vegetation clearance, again cleared by evening time. Services, fuel, food, rest stops every few miles. Even main and minor roads we used all in good condition.
We thought we were in dream land, but in fact it was France.
Within yards of leaving Dover ferry terminal, hundreds of cones, Dover docks entrance being dug up yet again.
I will quote figures obtained via the internet.
The Government receives £32 billion from UK motorists in annual taxation.
It spends £6.5 billion on our roads.
Pot holes cause £575 million in damage to motorists’ cars, annually.
The Government recently pledged £24 billion, over a four-year period, to rebuild and repair our roads (is this new and additional money or recycled money from previous proposals?).
Lincolnshire as a whole is proposing spending £360 million on improvements and repairs over the next five years.
In addition, motorists pay £23 billion on parking charges and a further £1.2 billion in fines, often on land they effectively own!
It is estimated it will cost £12.6 billion to fill in our pot holes, over a nine-year period!
I wonder will it need another nine years and vastly increased costs to fill in the new pot holes, that will occur during the time, fixing existing pot holes?
Why does the Government not use the difference in what it receives and spends (£25.5 billion annually) from motorists, get the pot holes fixed, or totally resurface our roads (a forgotten process), as opposed to the expenditure they give more importance too often on projects that they receive little or no return, just ever increasing costs.
The motorist is increasingly used as a cash cow by national and local Government, but little or none is spent on maintaining our increasingly deteriorating road structure!
John Bull
Holbeach
