Top dressing

[Mo1959]

It seems like every other road around here is being top dressed at the moment.

Hate the stuff. It's horrible for several weeks after its done with loose gravel, then you get a reasonable period but then it seems to start breaking up again and you are back to smooth bits and rough bits all over again.

 

[Drago]

Due to too dressing on local roads last month I was effectively cut off in our village by bicycle. Apart from the unstable surface for a few days, the accumulation of deep pools of debris on corners, there was the problem of cars hurtling past and I felt like I was on the receiving end of a blunderbuss, I have in and drove for a week until it had settled down.

I did email the carncil and complain about them doing so much at once and thus causing difficulties to those who don't own cars, schoolchildren etc, but they didn't give enough of a sheet to even reply.

 

[Saluki]

I tried taking different routes only to find they had top dressed those ones too. And on a hill it isn't very nice!

I got caught out on a top dressed hill the other day. Most unfunny. I just kept out into a tyre flatted bit and just didn't move over. The depth of the chippings was quite worrying either side and there was no footpath to get off and walk along either.

 

[Vapin' Joe]

It's even worse on the minor lanes because it takes months to get rid of the loose chippings. I've got two single track roads near me that have been unrideable for ages because you have no control on the steep descents.

 

[kiriyama]

Our local roads got this treatment last year. Every route I tried to avoid it ended in having to cycle over the equivalent of a stoney beach! Most of the roads have settled down but the cycle lanes at the sides of the road (where the cars don't compact the stones) are still horrid and now incredibly slow to ride over.

They also this year have top dressed a local climb which doesn't get a huge amount of traffic, so I guess that's another 2 years of ruined tyres full of little stones.

 

[Bobby Mhor]

I avoid the stuff,
a detour even if its miles.
I shredded a inner tube last year as I cycled over freshly laid stuff, mind you some tread on my tyre may have helped

 

[winjim]

Could be worse. Round here they're surfacing the roads with broken light bulbs.

 

[coffeejo]

You know the road's about to collapse in on itself if Somerset County Council authorises resurfacing instead of surface dressing. I'd like all the powers that be to get hit in the face by a spray of the gravel from passing cars so they know what it's like, in addition to all of the above points.

 

[winjim]

You know the road's about to collapse in on itself if Somerset County Council authorises resurfacing instead of surface dressing. I'd like all the powers that be to get hit in the face by a spray of the gravel from passing cars so they know what it's like, in addition to all of the above points.

I have fantasies of violent retribution against Sheffield City Council's Streets Ahead team.

 

[Globalti]

Fer Chrissakes STOP MOANING! What a bunch of miserable whining ingrates!

You lot live in Heaven, a place where the local council doesn't steal all the money and then completely neglect road maintenance. Believe it or not council highways engineers are trying to stretch their meagre budgets in the most effective way possible and if that means top-dressing to restore skid resistance for your safety, so be it. They have to choose the solution that brings the most benefit to the majority of road users and they ain't going to worry about a few cyclists.

You would have reason to whine if you lived in a big African city like Lagos. This is Happy Home Avenue, an important industrial estate road in an area of the city called Kiri Kiri where many large manufacturers have their factories. Every couple of years the state government comes along, grades the laterite and dumps an inch of hot tar on top then rolls it. The first big truck that turns tears it up, water gets in, turns the laterite to orange mud and within days the potholes are so big and so deep that trucks venturing into them actually fall over:

 

[jefmcg]

You would have reason to whine if you lived in a big African city like Lagos

"Eat your dinner. There are children starving in Africa"

 

[DanZac]

I can understand the need to top dress but why oh why must they use stones the size of house bricks. Riding any road in Hampshire that has just been done is like trying to cycle along Brighton beach. I don't know anything about road building but would have thought a smaller gravel would stick better and give improved traction and car ride.
Any of you civil engineers car to educate me on the need for boulder size gravel?

 

[ClichéGuevara]

Could be worse. Round here they're surfacing the roads with broken light bulbs. View attachment 99504 View attachment 99505

Whoa...Do I have a use for that picture.

https://www.cyclechat.net/threads/next-time-a-driver-you-know-complains.183781/post-3844332

 

[ColinJ]

I have been on roads that have had it done but are still nice and smooth to cycle on, so it is possible! Given that it IS possible, it is annoying that most roads do not end up like that.

Some of the roads round here are so rough that I have actually had bottles bounce out of the cages!

 

[winjim]

Whoa...Do I have a use for that picture.

https://www.cyclechat.net/threads/next-time-a-driver-you-know-complains.183781/post-3844332