11 November 2010

Does a shovel of ashphalt count as a repair?

| johnboy
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footpath patch

Just last week Chief Minister Stanhope was proudly announcing a “$4.1 million maintenance drive” on the city’s footpaths.

Well above is what my street got this week. A bloke with a shovel full of ashphalt over concrete.

Quality eh?

gappy footpath patch

A shovel full of ashphalt

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oddly, when they replaced the footpath outside my house and dug a chunk out of my ashphalt driveway (was there when I bought it . . ) I was told it would take a while to repair because they would save up all the ashphalt repairs and then do them all at once, as it required special machinery etc (whereas they could do concrete straight away). It was duly repaired a few weeks later.

I suspect someone had some ashphalt left over and was told to go around and do temp repairs with it rather than have it go to waste.

For those who are too lazy to go find the site on their own, here’s the Canberra Connect “Ask A Question” page: http://www.contact.act.gov.au/app/ask

Mysteryman said :

Apparently, roads aren’t worth spending money on unless that money is funding a new bike lane.

Y’know, I’d suggest you go hide back under your bridge, but then I realised that all the money we are spending on roads still doesn’t buy us bridges that stay up. One fell down while being bulit, and another is being blown up this weekend. So I realised that it’s not so much that the money’s not being spent on roads, it’s just that what the money’s buying isn’t worth spending money on.

Thus your comment is true – roads aren’t worth spending money on. As for new bike lanes, they are being added to roads as and when they are being resurfaced. The bike lane happens because the road resurfacing happens, not the other way around.

You could go to TAMS and ask for a schedule of roadworks and path repairs. You could go to Canberra Connect and ask about planned maintenance of your local road, gutters, bridges, footpaths…

… or you could come to RiotACT and troll from the comfort of your armchair, while the world goes to wrack and ruin for want of one more voice to stand up to Jon Stanhope and his mob (though it doesn’t matter who is in power, they’re all politicians, in the end).

They did the same around my suburb but it was only a temporary measure. About a month later they came back and dug up the entire section of footpath and laid new concrete.

ConanOfCooma1:30 pm 11 Nov 10

Anyone driving south along the highway from Calwell knows how bad the pot holes can get after the rain.

Funny thing is, they are always repaired within a few days, but they slowly erode away and leave the pot holes bigger than they were.

You’d think they would conduct some sort of preventative maintenance, but I guess that is how they justify employing all those people that actually do nothing.

going to be another budget shortfall for the Mayor and Deputy Dog… Point to Point speed cameras only work if you can speed…. with the quality of roads in Canberra the only thing those or any other red light camera will be good for is being used as ‘evidence’ by insurance companies when they sue the arse off TaMS for damage to cars caused by the road surface.

Apparently, roads aren’t worth spending money on unless that money is funding a new bike lane.

These ‘repairs’ are also being done to roads. I’ve been out of the country for three months and on return, I’m finding that its akin to driving a dodgem car along many Canberra roads to avoid the potholes, Russell Drive being a particularly bad example.

And yes, it was apparently a wet few months which can cause problems, but bandaid repairs like the above are just going to wash away anyway. I’ve lived in Canberra for a bit over thirty years, and over just the last few or so, there has been an extremely marked deterioration in road standards. Did the rot start to set in with the squiggly line repairs?

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