Pot-hole in Arts District; theatre-goers appalled!

I’ve not been to the new Portrait Gallery yet, but I’m scheduled for a lunch there in January.

The cafe better be nice or I shall be forced to take photos with malice aforethought.

I don’t know what he’ll make of New Parliament House, but I suspect that new portrait place is toast.

: )

Granny’s back!! =-D

Given the Government’s tendency to import foreign beasties (see Bettongs and possibly Rock Wallabies), I assumed the worst. Bunyips usually care for their environments better.

Well of course it’s Alex! How did I not realise that. Imagine suspecting a feral exotic rather than a native species…

“bitch-u-men” LOL!

Well, I’ve been feeling a tad hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobic, but I just love you guys!

: )

Granny lives!

Welcome back to RiotACT, where a discussion of potholes\yeti is the most exciting thing going on.

I’d know a bunyip anywhere, NoAddedMSG.

Are you sure it was caused by a yeti and not an escaped mutant land-dwelling manatee from an ANU research lab?

Anyway, yeti my donkey! This is clearly the work of a bunyip ….

Me too – in the mirror

Ooh, ooh, I’ve got one: ‘bitch-u-men’ ….

*boom boom* *bang bang*

“Put in the boot!” I sez. “Put in the boot!”

I saw a yeti once.

Damn you Gunghalin Al, I was a veteran rioter, but a glitch in the time space continuim saw me reverted to agitator – been asking to be reinstated as a veteran to no avail

Kiss my asphalt.

JC: Roads suck sometimes, and sometimes they dont.

Represent your community if there are things that you are not happy with. This need not mean you have to be a local member of parliament – just send a letter and petition your local member.

Do things that will get the wider communities intrest out there and known by your local member..

As I do not know you (JC) from a bar of soap, perhaps you are already a local political representitive of the community in which you live or chose to support, or have already slated your problems with your local member etc.

If so I commend you, but bitching about infrastructure on RA will just waste calories and time and provide no results except the above postings.

JC: it is good that after keeping this thread alive for 4 days now, we are back to being civil to each other. Seems we are about at the point where we just agree to disagree, and I can continue to wage my war on the Assembly to ensure that it gives Roads ACT adequate money to do this better. So my kids and yours can play outside, so people living near arterial roads have less noise, etc etc.

Because I don’t ever accept “that is just the way it is” – give me a status quo that I don’t think makes sense and I’m not likely to let go of it.

Perhaps we can move on to more important issues such as what to do about these damn yetis? Perhaps if we got them onto Lite’n’Easy they wouldn’t do so much damage?

And thanks – you’ve helped get me bumped up to “Veteran”. Woo hoo!

As in:

“We used spray pave”

“With what porpoise?”

Jesus, people getting so passionate about bitumen! 🙂

Anyway, this hole has most likely been caused by the fact that a very large concrete pumper has been parked on or near that very spot on numerous occasions over the past 6 months while that new building has been under construction, and it is my belief that this has something to do with the cause of this pothole.

Note in the background there is a Telstra comms pit with a temporary safety barrier around it on the median strip – that was also damaged by the concrete trucks parking on top of it while the ground was wet – they’d managed to push the pit cover about 7 inches into the ground!

I blame global warming!

I can tolerate the sledging, I can tolerate the diversion from my proof positive of urban dwelling yetis, I can tolerate the use of CAPS LOCK.

What I can’t tolerate any longer is porus. It’s porous!

No cheapest is not always best but (the new part of GDE sure the shit shows this). But with resealing existing good quality roads (which most in suburban ACT are) why do wee need to go to the expense resheeting what is otherwise a perfectly good road? The only problem with the older roads is they have become porus due to age and need to be resealed. Resealing as a form of preventative maintenance is a perfectly fine way (yes with side effects such as noise) but that is just the way it is.

BTW in suburban (back) streets they usually use a much finer grade of gravel which produces much less noise. Main roads use a corser grade so that they can handle the higher speeds and larger flow of traffic. I know my street in Macgregor has been resealed many times in the 25 years I have lived there and if you went out to have a look you probably couldn’t tell it was a resealed road. Florey drive on the other hand is clearly gravel sealed.

As for the treatments used elsewhere such as your porus QLD road, if I recall correctly (from the file you linked to) one of the down sides is a reduced life due to it having a high percentage of air and of course the extra cost of having sub-terainian drainage (and yes I know normal ACT roads have this, but on a different scale). I also think I read it is only used where it is really needed.

It is all a fine blance between cost and longevity, ie value for money. Not wants or needs a Rolls Royce when a Honda will do, and in the ACT resealed roads are the best all round solution.

PS The treatment in Hackett and Watson is different, not because of the final layer but because it was over an existing hotmix road. The crap on GDE will be falling apart long before those roads ever do (in fact it started breaking not long after it opened), so yes overtime people will see the difference. Indeed the construction technique of the spray pave roads is what will let them down.

Now we are starting to get somewhere – insults notwithstanding.

So it seems after all of that, that yes we agree that spraypave is a crap treatment for arterial roads such as the GDE.

You don’t believe it is worth investigating a road treatment that I nominated as having been very successful in other parts of the country, so perhaps you are somehow involved in the budgeting for same and are baulking at the additional cost of such a treatment? But just because “none in Canberra use that method” is not a valid reason for not investigating potentially better ways. Too many people and organisations in Canberra take that inappropriate path. “Not invented here” syndrome has no place in good government.

So the actually treatment used in the suburban back streets of Hackett and Watson recently is a bit different? So what? Unless someone was there when it was done, they wouldn’t know the difference. What they do know is that they have exactly the same end result – a crappy looking harsh surface that causes road noise, leaves loose gravel everywhere, and shreds their kids skin when they play in the street.

“Yeah the surface is a bit rough, but on a cost basis it is the best all round solution” – so cheapest is best hey? I do not agree, and that is the point of the suburban aspect of my discussion. Out of every single town or city I have lived in (and that’s quite a few) apart from Canberra I have only seen this method used once on suburban streets and that was in my electorate before I was elected – and it never happened again. Hotmix (or whatever name you choose to use) is the “global standard” for these situations, and justifiably so.

People in the suburban areas deserve a quality road surface that does not have detrimental impacts on their residential amenity, just to save a few bucks. Me if I lived on a quiet back street I’d like for my kids to be able to drive their remote control car, ride a skateboard, kick a soccer ball – play with their neighbours… None of that happens with a crappy gravel seal coat (by whatever name or underlying process) because someone who doesn’t live there decided it was “the only cost effective option”.

Have we had enough yet JC?

el said :

Comprehension isn’t your strong suit, is it?

Who Al or me?

It seems that old Al is ready to dish it out at others without reading what they have to say first.

Oh BTW Al the method used in road re-sealing in the ACT is called seal coat. Ie that is what they have done to orginal parts of Gungahlin Drive and the annual suburban road reseal. It is different to what was done to parts of GDE, and shock horror I have agreed all along that GDE should have been a full hotmix road and not the shit they have used.

I disagree when it comes to resealing existing hotmix roads in the suburbs. Yeah the surface is a bit rough, but on a cost basis it is the best all round solution and has been used in the ACT (and elsewhere) well before self government.

Comprehension isn’t your strong suit, is it?

Al you have your head so far up your bum you didn’t even get what I was getting at in my orginal post, and have been throwing in out of field comments (such as construction mnethods not used in the ACT) to justify your argument. I will repeat spray pave is NOT what they have done to reseal suburban streets. Resealing a road and spray pave are TWO different things.

I will repeat. Spray pave is that shit they have used to create a good part of the GDE. Spray pave is a technique whereby they make a stablaised base then spray down a tar substance and some rocks for the actual driving surface. The technique is about the total construction of the road not just the final layer. Although yes from a drivers perspective the end result may look the same.

Road resealing has the same last two steps but is NOT spray pave. I will also repeat that road resealing is done because the road has become porus (and I don’t give a flying rats bum if roads in QLD are porus, none in Canberra use that method), so they need to seal it with a tar substance and then put rock down or resheet with a layer of asphalt.

In Canberra resealing suburban roads this way is the only cost effective option because generally our roads are not that damaged, like say roads in Sydney by heavy vehicles. In places where there is damage a new layer of hotmix does the job of resealing and making the road smooth again. Although the Barton highway exercise of several years ago was a debarcle.

Now if you cannot see the difference then you never will.

Bugger – forgot about them. 😛

Needs more CAPS LOCK exclamation points.

Your argument is getting more and more pathetic JC.

Seeing as how you seem unable to use Google, and your memory is failing you, here are my original quotes:

It is not. It is a cheap and nasty temporary solution that has a noise impost on nearby residents, a cost impost on car owners whose vehicles are peppered with stone chips, a skin impost on kids playing on the suburban streets done over with this stuff, and a cost impost on taxpayers when it inevitably starts falling apart within a year or so of laying.

Roads such as these should have full-depth self-draining asphalt. Nothing less. And suburban streets such as those around Hackett and Watson that have been spraypaved should have hotmix.

and responding to your first bleat:

The hotmix used in suburban streets and what is generally used on open roads can be quite different though. The open road variant involves putting down a waterproof bitumen skin first, then the asphalt over the top is quite porous. This allows rain to run through and off the surface, then drain away to the side underneath – really helps prevent aquaplaning.

and

In Qld I lived on a very dangerous corner on an open road. Many accidents – especially when wet. Main Roads resurfaced the stretch using this exact approach. I meant that there was no water laying on the surface, therefore no aquaplaning. The water runs off the the sides underneath the surface. Making the need for a properly shaped water table for the impermeable layer critical of course, but eminently doable. There was also a proportion of the content that was rubber crumb if I recall correctly – for additional grip.

Clearly talking about use of open grade asphalt being used as an “open road variant”, in the context of a thread about use of spraypave on the GDE. And also clearly talking about use of ordinary hotmix on suburban streets, as opposed to the cheap and nasty spraypave that has been used in recent times.

And clearly explaining where my previous experience of this road treatment came from. All from the previous thread – not as you are now trying to claim.

Good thing about the web is that crap like you are trying to spin (for whatever reason I know not – what’s John Hargreaves middle name? Start with a C by any chance?) is easily exposed as just that.

And all this is the context of you raving on about spraypave being just wonderful.

But if you run a spraypave business, or you just reckon it’s the best road seal ever, that’s your getout. But just because you’ve never heard of something here in Canberra doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. I would have thought that documentary evidence from a state government website would have been enough. But that would have involved reading it woundln’t it? Something you don’t seem bothered about.

Get out a bit JC – there’s a whole world of other ideas out there.

JB: there’s your spray of the week (pun intended). 🙂

tylersmayhem said :

A little common sense gos a long way! Nice work Al!

Common sense with Al? Nah, in the other thread we were disucssing roads in the ACT in particular hotmix asphalt and spray pave and the fact that these roads are not porus and that the hotmix surface in particular needs to be resealed, to prevent the very thing you see in the picture in this thread.

As time went on and his lack of knowledge became apparent he has now turned to a road surface used in QLD. QLD is not the ACT and what they do up there is of no reliveance to the ACT. Back peddle some more Al.

A little common sense gos a long way! Nice work Al!

As I said before JC, and which you appear to steadfastly refuse to do, reread my original posts on the other thread. Because I said no such thing. I was talking about a road surface use (to great effect) in Qld. A place where it actually rains.

But don’t bleieve me JC. Read it from the people who built it – Qld Main Roads in this fact sheet. Read the section about Open Graded Asphalt.

Do you seriously contend that I don’t know why road surfaces crack up?

Yetis. And B-doubles. But mostly yetis.

Seguing to a barely related annecdote, I had a problem outside the Nambour Primary School where I had to get a large wet pothole repaired several times over three years. Even got the engineers to check all the piping plans to make sure there wasn’t a leaking pipe underneath it. Nope. They concluded it was a spring and there was nothing they could do about it. So the last repair I suggested they lay ag pipe under it to the nearest drain. Bingo.

Dang JC, couldn’t you have used CAPS throughout the entire post?!

Gungahlin Al said :

For pete’s sake JC – different road, different asphalt treatment. Go re-read my previous posts on that thread please? Then you can stop misrepresenting what I said. The treatment I was discussing was a relatively expensive specialised arterial road treatment and hardly suitable for a bloody carpark – with or without stray yetis…

As an elected member I spent more time than I care to remember with the State’s and the shire’s design engineers discussing and planning road design and construction projects.

Besides, I’d be pretty sure those cracks happened when the yeti strolled through – you ever seen one? Big buggers…

THERE IS NO ROAD THAT DRAINS UNDER THE SURFACE IN THE ACT. ASPHALT ROADS (read hotmix) ARE WATER PROOF AND THE WATER RUNS OFF THE TOP. POT HOLES ARE CAUSED BY WATER GETTING UNDER THE SURFACE THEN WITH TRAFFIC GOING OVER THE TOP BREAKING IT ALL UP. THEY OCCOUR ON OLDER ROADS AS THE SURFACE HAS BECOME PORUS DUE TO TRAFFIC CASUING HIARLINE CRACKS ALLOWING WATER UNDERNEATH. NO ROAD IN THE ACT (THAT I KNOW OF) HAS THIS MAGIC WATER PROOF MEMBRANE YOU SPEAK OF UNDER THE ROAD TO ALLOW WATER TO DRAIN UNDER THE SURFACE.

I have only ever once seen a road with a water proof membrane and that was in London. It was a thick plastic sheet not a spray of tar. The spray of tar is there to allow the road base and the asphalt layer bind.

And I don’t care where you were an elected member, it makes no difference, you have been feed porkie pies.

For pete’s sake JC – different road, different asphalt treatment. Go re-read my previous posts on that thread please? Then you can stop misrepresenting what I said. The treatment I was discussing was a relatively expensive specialised arterial road treatment and hardly suitable for a bloody carpark – with or without stray yetis…

As an elected member I spent more time than I care to remember with the State’s and the shire’s design engineers discussing and planning road design and construction projects.

Besides, I’d be pretty sure those cracks happened when the yeti strolled through – you ever seen one? Big buggers…

Behold! I am now teh Queen of this information

Quick Answer
Possums are protected under the Nature Conservation Act 1980 and it is illegal for an unauthorised person to trap or harm them. If you have tried to exclude the possum from your house but have had no success, contact a licensed pest control company to trap the possums, complete the exclusion work and re-release the possums on site.

Further Information
Normally possums make their homes in tree hollows but if there aren’t any they will use any suitable dark place – and the space between the ceiling and roof of a house is a great spot. This is when possums can create havoc and many sleepless nights in your home.

Blocking the entry is the only way to guarantee that the possum will not return. If the possum is removed by trapping, its home site becomes vacant, ready for another possum to move in and the problem continues. Also, possums are strongly attached to their home site and will return to it over distances of up to five kilometres.

The TAMS website provides information on living with possums , including their habits, determining if possums have moved into your house – and how to block them out or their removal by licensed pest control companies.

Contacts

Organisation Parks Conservation and Land
Phone 13 22 81
Website TAMS Website

If I have a possum in my roof – can someone from parks and wildlife come and take it away?

I am now in virtual communication with an officer of TAMS, who seems perfectly lovely, although his computer has been giving him some grief.

I’ve not asked about possums yet.

Gungahlin Al said :

I think it’s unfair to blame TaMS for what is clearly a yeti footprint.

Hey Al, notice what has happened around this yeti foot print. Yep the road has broken up letting water in, and quite clearly it hasn’t drained through your hypothetical subterannian road drainage system. As I said potholes are caused by the surface becoming porus, water getting underneath and swelling the surface, which causes all those cracks you see, which eventualy turns into a pot hole.

Has anyone checked to make sure this is not a new piece of community art?

ahh, but do you know the species of snake? sorry, then, can’t help you…

Tylers, in the ACT you aren’t SUPPOSED to speak to anyone directly. Maintaining the Canberra Connect Call Centre is marginally cheaper than the Canberra Connect Shopfronts, but it would be economically sensible to minimise the use of either. The TAMS website only gives you contact details for Canberra Connect.

Ringing Canberra Connect or emailing Canberra Connect, the result should be the same. If you claim is true, I refuse to pander to service agencies that can only serve in one modality.

I might ring and ask about the relevance of snakes and possums to pot holes however.

Maybe try giving them a call? I’ve found whenever I want to moan about something to get it fixed – it seems to get better attention when talking to someone directly and getting a job number. this has always had positive and quick results.

Thanks for clarifying, Skid. Roadworks are a specialist business that I just do not understand.

Having registered as an official community moaner I intend to use my power wisely.

Or not. 😉

Don’t you see, poptop?

For a pothole to need repair, it has to be large enough to _attract snakes and possums_.

Better call Tim the Yowie Man! That looks like a Big Foot footprint!!!

You know what? I did; via the Canberra Connect Website.

Interestingly, I used the dropdown menus advising my input was

Topic – Transport, Road and Traffic
Sub-topic – Other
Comment Category – Notification.
“Pothole at corner of Childers Street and University Avenue
See http://the-riotact.com/?p=10104

The advice I received was as follows :-

*** YOUR COMMENT/REQUEST HAS NOT YET BEEN SUBMITTED, PLEASE CLICK “FINISH SUBMITTING QUESTION”AFTER READING THE INFORMATION BELOW.***

XXXX,

The FAQs below were automatically selected for you. If the FAQs listed are not helpful, select “Finish Submitting Question” to submit your issue.

Snakes
Removing Possums

The FAQs selected were not helpful and so I finished submitting the question .

Some days I despair . . .

Cripes – it’s hardly a car damaging crater! But a good point by Gobbo – did you call the appropriate dept. to report this?

Only 3,999 to go and we’ll be up there with Blackburn

haha…thanks. I knew I’d typed it wrong again, figured I’d let it slide instead of being a 3 post nutbag. 🙂

“promptly” even…

“promtly”, that is

We’ve reported potholes in our street before & they’ve been promply fixed. We don’t even live in the Inner North!

I think it’s unfair to blame TaMS for what is clearly a yeti footprint.

Are you serious????

If all the art folk/govt didn’t waste money on things like empty barrels to place in streets disguised as art, there would be enough money to repair roads.

Gobbo, I thought I had!

8-D

Now, that WOULD be a ‘Miracle on Childer’s Street’.

Ever thought of reporting it, or would that be too difficult?

13 22 81. 🙂