22 October 2013

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

| Jere13
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Looks like now th ACT Goverment’s rock bottom quality, coarse chipseal has come to area’s of Kingston, Red Hill, around Hotel Realm and Yarralumla. So now not only do you get extreeme tyre roar and rumble right as you pass the “Welcome to the ACT” sign, now if you stay in Canberra’s only five star hotel you can get a series of complimentary stone chips as you drive into the Hotel Realm.

This stuff is just rubbish and looks terrible. Get your act together Rattenbury and pay a little more for a better quality seal.

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switch said :

KB1971 said :

Jeebus what a rant!

On Saturday and Sunday I rode my bike on the Princes highway in the south of Sydney, far worse than any chip seal job I have ever ridden on and its just the normal road………….

Well, that’s the point, isn’t it? Why do we have to have our roads, which the rest of the country would consider perfectly fine, even “paved with gold!,” trashed with this CrapSeal nonsense?

The chip seal isn’t ‘trashing’ the roads……..even with the chip seal the roads a far better than in many of our larger cities, even in their expensive suburbs.

The roads I rode on were a mix of concrete, lumpy tar and uneven surfaces. One lip was that bad it nearly pitched me off my bike because of the way I hit it took my be surprise as I wasn’t used to it.

I have never had that here.

Give it time to settle in and you wont even notice it.

As a question, does anyone know if there’s a cost-benefit analysis of the various road sealing methods out there? I don’t like this chipseal stuff, and it seems to get threadbare pretty quick, but does it actually stack up in terms of replacement period and cost?

La_Tour_Maubourg said :

Now Melrose Dr has been unnecessarily trashed. The road surface in Townshend St is already wearing away!
Perhaps some explaining from the TamsMediaRoom would be welcome here…

It’s even worse, just today they did Hurley street in Mawson which was fine. TAMS obviously have little regard to the quality of our roads in terms of ride and noise generation. They just want to patch them with a quick fix to defer doing a proper job.

TAMS stop ruining our roads and adding to wear and tear on our cars

KB1971 said :

Jeebus what a rant!

On Saturday and Sunday I rode my bike on the Princes highway in the south of Sydney, far worse than any chip seal job I have ever ridden on and its just the normal road………….

Well, that’s the point, isn’t it? Why do we have to have our roads, which the rest of the country would consider perfectly fine, even “paved with gold!,” trashed with this CrapSeal nonsense?

Jeebus what a rant!

On Saturday and Sunday I rode my bike on the Princes highway in the south of Sydney, far worse than any chip seal job I have ever ridden on and its just the normal road………….

The butchers have killed Melrose dr I use that road a dozen or more times a day road testing for noises no chance now

La_Tour_Maubourg3:32 am 05 Nov 13

Now Melrose Dr has been unnecessarily trashed. The road surface in Townshend St is already wearing away!
Perhaps some explaining from the TamsMediaRoom would be welcome here…

Far out, its being laid everywhere. Just drove down a street in swinger hill and it looks like truck full of bluemetal has tipped over.

It’s suprisimg that we all seem to be putting up with this rubbish. I’ve been getting reports from the U.S from Google news alerts of town hall meetings with residents taking action against coarse seals going down in their streets yet we seem pretty apathetic.

Why bother sealing them at all. If we really want to get an even better third world look, let’s just go with dirt roads. Just imagine how much cheaper that would be ,r Rattenbury.

The roads around the Realm are looking pretty ordinary already, some significant bare patches to be seen.

JC said :

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 think you’re missing the point mate.

I understand that resealing makes sense, my point is that the quality of the seal is just not up to scratch. Do a bit of searching and you’ll find that there are a number of better seals than single layer chip. If they just put a little more thought (and admittedly a few more $) we should have much smoother seals with far greater chip retention.

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……..

Felix the Cat2:41 pm 22 Oct 13

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

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