I used to work on the roads as a tarmac delivery driver.
I also did a research paper at school (when I was 14) on 'tarmac and how roads are built' as I thought I could skip the research part because my father had a tarmac haulage business for 50 years. The problem was I found out that my dad 'just delivered it' so I still ended up having to spend a lot of time in the local library
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I learned a lot about road building , tarmac and asphalt during that which helped me understand a bit more about what was going on when I took over the business years later.
Firstly there is not enough money going in given the higher use of the roads.Resurfacing a road is very expensive.
Second is the quality or work done on the roads now (in my opinion). Laying tarmac isn't just a case of spreading it about and rolling it. I guess it is like plastering a wall, it looks easy but knowledge/experience is needed if you want a good job.
Thirdly, short term politics don't mix with long term savings. So instead of resurfacing the road they repair, or worse just fill in potholes. It is a fraction of the price of a full repair or resurface but in the long term this costs more (if there is one pothole then chances are others are waiting to come through).
Most potholes are due to either a bad initial surfacing (seems to be becoming more of a problem over the last few years from what I've seen), bad repair/roadworks (most likely) or physical damage (less likely).
This brings the question as to how often do you see resurfacing (as apposed to repairing) now compared to the past. It definitely feels like a lot less to me.
It also seems like the roads they do resurface (like the M27 or A338 down this way) aren't as good. The M27 needed several parts resurfaced not long after completion due to the tarmac coming up.
The A338 had quite a few undulations in it (I'd driven on lots of new/resurfaced roads and I was quite surprised by this, most people probably wouldn't notice it). While this doesn't mean it is going to break up it doesn't point to the quality of resurfacing I was used to, a job like this should have the laser attachment 'mod' on the barber green if they can't do it manually.
Mainly it just comes down to investment. As my Dad used to say, buy cheap buy twice.
Use more expensive asphalt rather than cheaper tarmac, and good proven gangs to lay it. Make utility companies pay for council resurfacing when digging up roads than using their part time tarmac gang to do it. This would be a lot more expensive so they might start to work with each other and share the costs rather than having multiple trenches dug and refilled each time.
The councils, at the end of the financial year, used to end up resurfacing roads that weren't that bad in order to use up the government budget (use it or loose it system). Today I doubt they have nearly enough money to do the work they have let alone work out what to do with the surplus.
Where the money would come from is a different matter, there are a lot more important areas that need money at the moment (NHS, Police etc) but that is politics and a much bigger (and continually increasing ) problem IMO so isn't for this thread
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