Despite warning from police Local man remains committed to filling potholes - Sensationalist Headlines

Every week some random road in my city is being torn apart and put back up from the ground. I mean they last for like a week before getting all busted again but it feels REALLY nice those first few days.

Wasn't there a story of a guy spray painting dicks over the potholes, forcing the county to "censor them" by patching the potholes and covering his drawings? Sounds easier, and less of a liability. Found it Manchester man draws penises around potholes so the city will fi..

Nobody ever replaces every layer of asphalt. That would be a waste of money. A normal road has it's base course (the dirt/stone foundation everything is built on), a binder course of asphalt (Thicker with larger aggregate. It provides the road's load bearing capacity.), and then a wearing course (Thinner layer with smaller aggregate for ride comfort.). Sometimes you get specialty mixes like OGFC, but those aren't the most common on regular roads (yet). Potholes are usually an area where the top wearing course has broken up and comes out in chunks. This can be due to freeze/thaw or any other factors. When they fill a pothole, they will usually remove any loose pieces from the hole, clean it out with a broom and shovel, and then tamp in some cold mix by hand that they shovel out of the back of a small dump truck (because they are doing so many at one time that using bags of it would just add more time to everything). By the time you're patching potholes, the road has already degraded around it. After it's got enough potholes and degredation, they will mill off the wearing layer, leave the binder and base as it is, and then just lay down a new wearing layer. The potholes themselves are more dangerous than the repair. Btw, LITERALLY what they use. They just usually get it by the truckload from an asphalt plant. https://www.homedepot.com/p/Quikrete-50-lb-Commercial-Grade-Blacktop-Repair-170152/100545936 No, it REALLY doesn't. Unless you mean watching any 10 minute video of it on youtube as "training". No, it REALLY doesn't. Unless you mean watching any 10 minute video of it on youtube as "training". The only paperwork required is for tracking man hours and to make sure people aren't stealing/wasting the cold mix. Only for payroll. There is literally no training on "this is how you use a shovel, and this is how you use a hand tamper". If you're competent to show up to work, I'm betting you're competent enough to use a shovel, rake, or hand tamper. Yes, the shovel handle has to be straight enough. /s This one is fair game. It is a dangerous workplace environment, and the appropriate measures need to be taken. But this is complete nonsense. It's usually "Get as many done as you can. Whatever you don't finish today, you'll finish tomorrow.". A water main that's 4' under the ground is not even remotely applicable to filling in a 2-4" deep hole in the surface of the road. This is literally nonsense. Always with roadwork. Not very since they have potholes. Traffic control really is the only part of this that requires any kind of knowledge. Safety vests, and I'm going to suggest puncture resistant soled shoes because until you work on the roads, you REALLY don't understand how many things like hypodermic needs are on the side of the road. Once again, not ever remotely applicable. Non issue since if anything goes wrong, you literally end up with the same pot hole you started with in the worst case scenario. I understand the entire concept of a safe work environment with proper documentation and quality. But most of what you're saying is needed is WAAAAAY overkill for patching potholes, and why a $45 5 minute job turns into a $5,000 4 hour job for the same exact final product.

Winnipeg, Manitoba had such poor roads that I used to joke that they were the only city in North America that had gravel roads. It can be really bad there, I'm talking pot holes so big and numerous they take up half a lane of traffic or more and if you hit one of them they'll rip your axle off. God help you if it's raining because then they become indistinguishable from harmless puddles. They never used to bother fixing them either due to lack of funds or the recognition that by the time they fixed them all they'd be destroyed again by the extreme winter weather.

Or the more likely scenario is that it's embarrassing the authorities.

You don't do this for a job. This was my job and we're trained to a good basic standard Which requires all the above.

how come illiterate roman slaves built roads with primitive tools and you can still see the Via Appia around after two thousand years, but you take six weeks to fill a pothole with all this paperwork and training and it keeps its structural integrity about as long as a digestives biscuit in a cup of tea?

And he explained your training in a post you can read fully in under 2 minutes, with the background of a 10 minute youtube video?

Filling in pot holes is not trained work. I don't care if you were trained. It's not a hard job. A harder job than filling in pot holes is being a traffic controller at the work site of a pot hole.

The only time you require more tools and it requires more practice is if you are patching large potholes which require full patch cleanout, tack, hot mix, and a roller. But standard potholes which people are talking about, are filled with simple cold mix, a shovel, and a hand tamper. Nah. I was an engineering technician (roadway construction inspector/project manager rolled into one ball) for the department of transportation for 5 years and have certifications in basecourse and embankment inspection (dirtwork), ashpaltic concrete inspection (asphalt paving), with a specalty area in structural concrete, and I have my ATSSA Traffic Control Technician certification. I fully understand the various construction practices and their sampling, testing, and QC requirements. The maintenance department (who fills the potholes) requires no where this amount of red tape to fill potholes, at least not in the US.

You embody the quintessential bureaucrat.

Hole fixing is a difficult one. A road near my place is recieving a 4 mile long new piece of road for straightening and increasing the speed limit. For completeness, as part of the same works they've just started fully rebuilding the existing old stretch which is to be connected into the new stretch. This road is a strange composition and has always been very draggy and rough, but very hardy, so rather than 'potholes' forming, large depressions would slowly form until the entire car would jump in and out of them and 60mph became impossible. So, of course, the road needs a complete replacement. To keep it open during this work, they've had to put in a narrowing down to one way contraflow with traffic control, concrete barrier to protect the workers, and a convoy car in the day to keep the vehicle speeds down to 10mph passing the surfacing machine. To rebuild the mile stretch is taking place at a rate of 200 yards of one carriageway per week, meaning months of severe disruption to a major route. Those sort of works become basically essential after a certain age and number of patches/overlays. However it's not just about money, it's also about whether it's even possible to near enough shut that road for months at a time to rebuild. Where congestion is high because there are too many vehicles on the road, as in my home town, it becomes impossible for the local authority to fix the problem. The only reason this road is getting done is because it's currently closed one way and reduced to 30mph for 5 miles for the rebuild as it is, and almost nobody uses it because of that. It's hard to argue that the quality of patching should not be better, but it costs a fucking fortune to do it properly, with an overnight traffic control or total closure of a major route with no feasible alternative for night travellers. I live next to an airport, so our access roads are currently in a state of near collapse from subsidence but the Council cannot and will not close to repair, even overnight (which would in itself be horribly expensive). So the patches get patched.

What you're talking about though is a complete road resurfacing and rebuild. You're average pothole is "fixed" by 2-3 people in 15 minutes. One dude to drive the truck, one guy with a shovel, and one guy with a tamper, or if they're really cheap, then the guy with the shovel is also the driver. I guess sometimes they'll also have a guy with a "SLOW" sign if the road they're on is busy or narrow.

Problem is that's a cold tar fill, and it tends to damage the road surface around it come the next heavy rainfall, at least with the surfaces used to build the A-roads in my county. They've been doing a lot of that recently but it doesn't tend to fix the issues for more than a few weeks/couple of months at a time in the winter. It's a losing battle. A couple of times I've seen a few hours' closure where a particularly damaged bit be closed for a few hours, the top layer cut out in a square and relaid with hot asphalt but that's generally limited to the roads crossing town which can be bypassed fairly easily or have low impact traffic controls. I'm not saying potholes shouldn't be filled or anything, but there's a huge problem that stems from extreme austerity and lack of funds combined with massively swelling or overwhelming traffic numbers in a region. It just becomes impossible to win the constant battle against minor and major road surface deterioration.

Cold mix is used a lot because it's more economically viable. It takes a LLT of overhead to spin up an asphalt plant. All of your aggregate has to be completely dried in huge heating drums, and it's just all around expensive. But, if you produce enough of it, the relative overhead cost goes down. So 20,000 tons of wearing may be priced at around $110/ton, whereas 50,000 tons might be priced at $95/ton. So that little 4' long by 3' wide by 2" deep pothole might last a little longer if you use hot mix, but that roughly 1.5 tons of asphalt will cost you over 100 times as much once everything is said and done.

Not surprised to see another Marylander commenting on this. There's always construction workers taking months to do god knows what all over the place, slowing down traffic to a crawl, yet you can't drive 20 seconds without hitting another pothole.

Reminds me of that dude on st. george who steals people's lightbulbs during turtle hatching season

I showed my stepfather, a 20-year construction and highway maintenance manager and safety assessor and he actually laughed so hard he knocked over a coffee on my desk, so I'm gonna be invoicing you £5 for a pack of coffee pods.

Haha you actually think governments work and have the best interest of the people at heart.

Yeah, uh, nah, this ain't a good post. I understand worrying about Average Joe just walking up to potholes, but people have already pointed out the work he did isn't exactly rocket science, especially when officials take an equally basic approach. I find it deplorable that your stance in this matter is attacking the local man that stepped in, rather than government officials that stick their fingers in their ears and are so bad at doing their job that an ol' schmuck has to do it for them. You're right, someone needs to be held accountable, but you're pointing your finger in the completely wrong direction, buckaroo.

If you don't know how our system works, then maybe you shouldn't get this worked up. I understand your intentions are noble, but what this guy is doing is far better than what a majority of municipalities over here about this: nothing. You obviously have a very stringent system in the UK and I can tell you believe in it, but for several reasons ranging from logistics to plain old incompetence, that's not how it works here in the US. Right now, we gotta play the hand we're dealt. And this guy's making the best he can of the situation.