The Department for Transport has announced that it’s going to work with Tesco, Deliveroo, Uber and Ocado to map out the worst potholes on Britain’s roads. It means the Government will take data from some of the UK’s most well-travelled companies to determine where the most badass potholes are and which roads are in most urgent need of repair.
In a stunning bout of common sense, the Government determined that using these four major companies, which between them rack up millions of miles on the roads per year, is a great way of determining how the £2.5bn set aside for road repair should be prioritised.
Announcing the project, which will also include data mapping company Gaist, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said that “better road surfaces benefit motorists and cyclists alike ensuring the back to school and work environment is safer for everyone.” Absolutely, Grant. Absolutely.
In fairness to the Government, it did spend the quiet periods of lockdown to some advantage, reportedly repairing 319 miles of road, although potholes remain a major blight not only to motorists but to cyclists too. And while the £2.5bn budget set aside for road repairs seems like a lot, it’s estimated that it would cost around four times that amount (yep, that’s £10,000,000,000) just to fix the roads in England and Wales. That figure comes from a survey by the Asphalt Industry Alliance earlier this year.
Despite this new private-public pothole partnership, the Local Government Association (LGA) isn’t happy about the cuts in funding for maintenance work, which fell from £1.1bn per year in 2009/2010 to £701m in 2017/2018, and continues to slide. That drop, reckons the LGA, could have fixed almost eight million potholes.
The £2.5bn ring fenced budget for potholes is a welcome move, especially in the context of a plan that will see companies on the ground (literally) get involved, but according to the LGA’s Martin Tett, it’s not enough. He said: “It is not right that the Government spends 43 times per mile more on maintaining our national roads – which make up just three per cent of all roads – than on local roads, which are controlled by councils and make up 97 per cent of England’s road network.
“While the extra one-off funding announced in recent years has helped, we need Government to follow with a long-term funding plan to save our roads in the Spending Review.”
Keyword: Private-public partnership promises pothole patch-up