road being re-surfaced

[hero of valour]

quite a long stretch of road is being re-surfaced on my daily commute to work and it just so happens to stretch along a steep hill...its basically been covered with white gravel which firstly lets off a cloud of dust and secondly makes you skid around like a loon....its terrible...very dangerous and i cant believe any other cyclists would find it anything other than bl00dy dangerous....i know they need to sort the road but seriously its very dangerous....

 

[ianrauk]

Vile stuff that grey/green/whitish gravel. They leave a ton of it on the road which takes a couple of weeks for cars to disperse. Pain in the 'arris.

 

[ushills]

You don't want to fall off on it either, makes a right mess of skin.

 

[Smokin Joe]

They love that sort of resurfacing down here. Every summer at least one of my favourite routes is off limits for a month or two because it's un-rideable.

The craziest thing I've seen this year is a road near me which had long stretches of freshly laid tarmac laid in the last twelve months completely covered in this chip and tar rubbish a week ago.

 

[dawesome]

It's like cycling on cat litter over a layer of treacle.

 

[Jenkins]

The craziest thing I've seen this year is a road near me which had long stretches of freshly laid tarmac laid in the last twelve months completely covered in this chip and tar rubbish a week ago.

They did something similar on one of the roads I use a lot - except they'd scraped the surface and re-laid with lovely smooth tarmac the whole road, not just patches, only 2 months previously.

I swear that someone in Suffolk County Council's roads department has a relative with shares in a chippings company the amount of the stuff they use each year.

 

[Accy cyclist]

They're doing the same treatment to a road on one of my routes. I'm happy though, it's a nice steep decline, but it's been rough as you know what for years. I'm looking forward to a nice shiney smooth black surface when they've finished the job!

 

[youngoldbloke]

Top dressing = shortsighted waste of money. At best applied to smooth resurfaced roads, making them bumpy and unpleasant to ride. At worst a layer of chippings spread on a damaged road with little or no attempt to remedy underlying defects. In both cases bald patches appear within 12 months and the surface is worse to ride on than before.

 

[summerdays]

It's obviously Resurfacing week ... I've seen at least 4 in the last week on main routes too. My daughter was going into town on the bus and saw a bus from the opposite direction had skidded from one side of the road to the other side on the newly top-dressed surface.

 

[Arjimlad]

Must be the end of the financial year, they're spending what's left in the kitty on rubbish temporary solutions, to avoid having budgets reduced next year.

 

[Hacienda71]

Not in Cheshire East, they can't even afford to top dress.

 

[summerdays]

Well I've seen it in both Bristol City Council and South Glos this week. But why is it never the bits of the roads that I feel need doing?

 

[Red Light]

Vile stuff that grey/green/whitish gravel. They leave a ton of it on the road which takes a couple of weeks for cars to disperse. Pain in the 'arris.

Pain in the everywhere as the passing cars pepper you with loose chippings

 

[youngoldbloke]

You know the season has come around again when you see 'lay-by closed' signs, large piles of chippings, and mysterious lines, arrows and numbers appear spray-painted on country lanes.

 

[Dragonwight]

We have had similar although our roads were melting apparently due to a failure of the bonding so they covered the road in this fine granite dust which is not only hell to breath in when its kicked up by speeding cars but also totally destroys the paintwork on your bike and gets in everywhere. I asked our local council what consideration they had given to cyclists using the road and got fobbed off.