No quick fix for London’s roads’ says Eurobitume Technical Lead
Eurobitume’s Dr Ian Lancaster revealed, at a recent meeting of the London Highways Engineers Group (LoHEG), that, at the current rate, it would take eight years and £1.22 billion (€1.4 bn) to bring the capital’s road network into a ‘reasonable steady state’.
This was one of many findings in the latest Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance (ALARM) report on road conditions and funding in England and Wales, produced by the Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA), a partnership between Eurobitume and the Mineral Products Association (MPA).
Ian also reported that London boroughs typically spend 30% of their carriageway maintenance budgets on reactive maintenance, primarily pothole repairs, compared with 22% for authorities in England as a whole. If this were reduced to a more appropriate 18% (as agreed by the survey respondents), an extra £22.5m (€26m) would be freed for proactive asset management across the capital.
Despite an average 31% increase in carriageway maintenance budgets in London, the ALARM report also highlights that long-term under-funding of road maintenance has led to road conditions deteriorating over the last decade to the extent that:
- The proportion of roads classified as being in a good state of repair has fallen by 14%
- Roads showing some signs of deterioration have doubled to 34%
- Roads in poor overall condition have decreased slightly, by 3%
