Welcome to Canberra, home of Australia's roughest road seals

Onceler said :

I wouldn’t mind too much except for all the loose gravel. Apart from the noise and stone chips, it’s a safety hazard, especially for two-wheeled vehicles.

Many months after the resealing in Belconnen, the loose gravel has finally almost all been swept up. It’s taken at least three visits from the sweeper truck.

In the long term, maybe 4wd’s and trail bikes are the answer. Then we wouldn’t need sealed roads at all!

So at home if something wooden needs painting do you repaint or replace? My guess is repaint, because it is cheaper and the underlying wood is still good, you repaint to prolong its life.

Same too with the roads, the surface, in Canberra with lower and lighter traffic volumes (compared to main roads in Sydney for example) after 10-15 years need to be re-sealed they don’t need to be replaced. The method may not give the smoothest result, but at 1/4 of the cost I for one don’t want to be paying extra to have an otherwise perfectly good road replaced when it can be resealed.

I wouldn’t mind too much except for all the loose gravel. Apart from the noise and stone chips, it’s a safety hazard, especially for two-wheeled vehicles.

Many months after the resealing in Belconnen, the loose gravel has finally almost all been swept up. It’s taken at least three visits from the sweeper truck.

In the long term, maybe 4wd’s and trail bikes are the answer. Then we wouldn’t need sealed roads at all!

Jere13 said :

Canberran’s in the newer suburbs aren’t probably aware of this problem as chipseal needs a asphalt/concrete base. Gungahlin especially seems to have excellent roads…..that is until the man with the dump truck of gravel turns up in 15 years time as part of the resealing programme.

Actually Gungahlin (and Dunlop) are starting to get to the age where chip seal is appearing, and thats the key it is generally an age thing, after 10-15 years the surface needs to be resealed provided it hasn’t been totally buggered and needs full replacement.

Also not true it needs an asphalt or concrete base, there are roads where the base is nothing much more that compacted aggregate. The method involves laying the base, often with cement as a stabilising agent (doesn’t make it concrete though) they then spray and put down the chip for the surface. Normally you see this on temporary road surfaces. Some examples that come to mind in Canberra are the deviation on Coppins Crossing Road, parts of Horse Park Drive. They also do use it on more permanent roads with very shit results, William Hovell Drive through Glenlock being such an example and the Barton Highway to Clarrie Hermes Drive road (though I suspect where this has been used on this road it is actually a temporary alignment). They also used it on the road into Jerra many moons ago, also quite shit.

This method has also been recently used on the Federal highway Canberra bound from near the start of the average speed zone, though what they did here was put the stabilised surface over the existing road surface, so it may have a better chance of surviving.

Quite noisy along this section of road too, just like when you enter Canberra. In fact the roads in Jerra are also noisy, I think what makes the Federal Highway on the Canberra side so noticeable is the speed people travel at and the fact the road on just on the NSW side isn’t down. But seeing as you mention noise the concrete roads commonly used on highways in NSW is also very noisy, especially when new and when trucks start to form groves in the road (the latter is very noticeable along lake George)

I would have to say it’s the poorest quality chip seal ever seen and wonder if it’s even worth paying for as there are massive patches of now missing chip seal in the surface in a few months.

I’m not suggesting that we break the budget with 100% asphalt, rather that we invest in better quality double layer chipseal, capeseal or slurry seal. Sure it’s more expensive but it’s vastly superior to what we are getting. It’s hard to have a conversation in the car on the ACT side of the Federal Hwy with all the tyre roar from that particularly rough seal.

I guess if the majority of people are happy with the roads they way they are things will stay the same, but I am hearing a lot of people complaining about stone chips from the recent seals which seem to have a very low stone retention rate. Canberran’s in the newer suburbs aren’t probably aware of this problem as chipseal needs a asphalt/concrete base. Gungahlin especially seems to have excellent roads…..that is until the man with the dump truck of gravel turns up in 15 years time as part of the resealing programme.

Actually Jere13 it isn’t Rattenbury that needs to pay more (and more is about 4 times the cost, but every 5 years rather than 10, so the effective cost is double), no it is the ratepayers of the ACT who need to pay more for this to be done.

As for me, no surprises here but I don’t see the value in ripping up a road that needs maintenance (read resealing) rather than unnecessary replacement. Sure there are downsides, but I would rather that money be spent elsewhere.

PS chip seal has been used in all parts of Canberra including Kingston, Red Hill, etc for a number of years, so nothing new there. Just around the corner from the Realm is one of Canberra’s roughest and oldest road surface which happens to be one of the few concrete slab roads. But it does the job so doesn’t need replacing either.

Move to Melbourne & see how you like the roads there……..

Do we really need 10 different threads all on the same subject?