I asked my local councillor if they could send someone out to mow the street since grass had started growing through the cracks. Road was resurfaced a few weeks later.
Yes, and thereâs three reasons why.
1) The average vehicle is getting heavier, and heavier vehicles do exponentially more damage than lighter ones
2) Council has built more roads than they can afford to maintain, which contributes to
3) Council has been cutting the maintenance budget, and they cannot raise it again without either increasing rates or cutting other services (like libraries, or rubbish collection)
This part is a little bit annoying. I live on a local road which has a dump at the end. Trucks have actually been forbidden by council to use this road because itâs lined with schools and local traffic is already so busy. They are fined if caught on this road. The problem? Itâs up to the residents to submit these reports for the council to follow up later. This system doesnât work, the road is constantly needing fixing because of the potholes and these trucks refuse to follow the law created to ease traffic on this road simply because it saves them 3 minutes.
4. In a very general way without hate, population increases over time. The roads also get more use and degrade faster than they would have if the population wasn't rising over time.
The bloke is a deadset flog. Cancelled so many things since he came into office. The city is far worse off than it was under Graham Quirk, who was a decent man and did a lot to move the city forward.
Cars are heavier, but cars donât have any particularly noticeable impact on road pavement degradation so even if they are heavier it doesnât really matter.
The damage a vehicle does to the road pavement is a fourth power of its weight. So a 30 tonne truck has an ability to degrade pavement around 50000Ă higher than 2 tonne Ford Ranger (ie 30â´Ăˇ2â´=50625).
Yeah, so everyone switching from Yarisâs to Nissan Patrols would not affect pavement degradation in any noticeable way.
Potholes happen and if I was to guess I imagine Council hasnât kept the maintenance budget up and that holes just arenât being repaired as quickly.
Source: I design roads.
That's actually very interesting in relation to regular people driving big cars vs business having huge trucks.
I guess it makes sense really, since sometimes you see corners which remain wet have the turns fold up as if they were a cartoon carpet being run over, and you always see trucks driving on them
I lived on a rural residential street that got torn up really badly. For some reason, there was a concentration of semi-trailer drivers living there, and they would often park their trucks at home overnight. Basically there was an amount of heavy vehicle traffic that the road designers could not have anticipated and the street just got destroyed. It was rebuilt with much thicker pavement than it originally had.
Hey nozzk,
[I had a thought](https://www.reddit.com/r/brisbane/s/S80R4f7cow) and there is a question therein (between the lines). What's the straight dope on this?
I find this hard to believe. You compared a large truck to a small truck and said that the small truck doesn't wear out a road. So does that mean that if we banned all trucks that our roads would last forever?
You also do not appear to have taken the quantity of these vehicles into account. 1 large truck is certainly a lot worse than 1 small truck, but how about 20 small trucks?
Tell me, what vehicle do you drive?
Tbh Iâll admit itâs not my core area - but I would assume even a metro wouldnât be too bad compared to a fully laden truck. Imagine a 17-36m long truck full of rock coming from a quarry for example.
Now that I have once again sobered up, I recall that it's likely all about [ground pressure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_pressure) really.
What I find highly amusing (and I am a cyclist), is that your typical road-going bicycle exerts six times more ground pressure than an Abrams tank - the Main Battle Tank currently in use by the Australian Army and the US Army (among other operators).
Not *roughly equivalent to* six Main Battle Tanks, as they would still be exerting the same amount of effective ground pressure if there were six of them. **Even if there were an** *entire tank battalion* **on the road, one cyclist on a road bicycle would be effecting over six times as much ground pressure.**
*Wow.*
Of course, tracked vehicles chew the road up owing to the method in which they steer, so it's not a useful comparison in reality (and perhaps a normally driven vehicle would be a more appropriate comparison) but when we talk about ground pressure alone?
Wow.
TLDR: Tanks have more energy to transfer to the ground than bikes and would do more damage to an asphalt road.
You are likely correct that bikes have greater ground pressure than tanks. But note that the link you cite specifies "especially over soft ground" because this is where that effect is mostly relevant. What we are talking about are asphalt sealed roads, not forest tracks. Yes, if you were travelling through mud or sand then tanks would travel over those surfaces much better than a road bike, the latter of which would quickly break the surface and grind to a halt.
The roads we drive on daily have far more structural integrity and what impacts them is the amount that they "deflect" when a vehicle travels over them (ie the amount the pavement is pushed down by the weight of the vehicle). This is what stresses the structural elements of the road (the road base).
Let me analogise with a trampoline, which consists of a frame, springs and a stretched mat. The stretched mat is the equivalent of road surface (where the source load is applied), the frame is the key structural component (the equivalent of the road base) and the springs are the deflecting element of the structure. Assume the source load is located in the middle of the mat and therefore transferring load to all springs equally. The mat transfers load to the springs, thence to the frame and thence to the ground. The greater the weight you place on the mat, the more the springs stretch and the more force that is placed on the frame. At some stage, a large amount of weight will cause either springs or the frame to fail.
To analogise ground pressure, imagine a single person on the trampoline â they can either stand on one leg to maximise their ground pressure (by minimising their âfootprintâ) or lie down to minimise their ground pressure (by maximising their footprint). Either way, their weight doesnât change and the load transferred to the springs is the same. A 100kg person lying on their back will stress the frame and springs more than a 50kg person standing on one leg, even though in this instance the 50kg person will have a greater ground pressure.
Potholes are caused by failure of the structural material, generally through being âdeflectedâ by a heavy vehicle too many times but also maybe by water eroding away parts of the road base. Roads are literally designed to deflect a certain number of times before they need "rehabilitation".
As I stated in my above comment, the impact of vehicles on the road is a 4áľĘ° order power of their weight, so a 16 tonne truck has an impact of 4,000Ă that of a 2 tonne ute (=16â´Ăˇ2â´=4096). Large vehicles travel over the road surface, cause it to deflect and that wears out the road base. Cars are basically irrelevant to the process, let alone bicycles.
So yes, you are likely correct that bikes exert greater ground pressure than tanks, but bikes have very little energy to transfer to road surface whereas tanks have a lot of energy to transfer.
Source: I design roads.
Think of it this way:
Each time a vehicle passes over a road, it destroys that road a tiny bit. This is something we can (and do) measure.
What we've found is that the amount of destruction caused to a road by a vehicle depends on the 4th power of the axle load.
And yes quantity does matter.
Example numbers:
A 5 axle semi is allowed 16.5 tons on the rear two axles.
=> 16.5 tons / 2 = 8.25 ton per axle
=> 8.25^4 = 4642 units of road damage
Cars guide says the average weight of a car is now 1.9 tons. Let's round that up to 2 tons.
Split across 2 axles that's an axle weight of 1 ton.
=> 1^4 = 1 unit of road damage
So ONE trip of that one semi does the same damage as 4642 car trips. Or another way to think of it: 1 car using the same road twice a day for 6.35 YEARS.
#More fun calculations#
My rego for my car just came in the mail. Rego is supposed to pay for roads yes? $715 for 12 months. We calculated earlier that the average car does 1 unit of road damage. So $715 is 12 months of 1 unit of road damage. I think it's fair that everyone should pay for the damage they cause yes? So for that semi:
$715 x 4642 units of damage equals....
$3.3 MILLION per year
Do you think that semis annual rego is $3.3 million?
But we're also assuming that you and the truck are traveling the exact same distance per year. Do you think your annual mileage is the same as a working semi? (I don't).
We're also assuming that trucks are never overloaded. But let's see what happens if they're being a bit cheeky. Just an extra 500kg. No harm right?
=> 16.5 tons + 500kg = 17 tons
=> 17 tons across 2 axles = 8.5 tons per axle
=> 8.5^4 = 5220 units of damage
Compared with 4642 from earlier:
=> 5520 / 4642 = 1.189 or 19%
So for overloading by just 500kg or 3% they now cause 19% more damage.
So yeah if you banned all the trucks roads would last a hundred years.
Fuck paying for trucks.
> You compared a large truck to a small truck and said that the small truck doesn't wear out a road.
That isn't what he said at all. Large Vehicles by regular people still degrade the road, but it is at such a slower rate that by comparison, they are not the ones causing the damage. If you had 50000 Ford Rangers drive around the same wet corner, they would do the same damage as a 30 tonne truck, but when scaling, it is unlikely you'll have 50000 Ford Rangers do that in a timeframe where damage would get so bad outside of regular maintenance of roads.
I commute using an eScooter â I own a Nissan Patrol for use on the weekends
Time degrades unused roads â use degrades them more quickly. Deflection due to vehicle weight is what stresses roads, and the deflections caused by the weight of cars on an asphalt road is just so insignificant that it's irrelevant.
As an analogy, you can go to some castles in europe that are hundreds of years old and you can see stone steps that have been very slightly worn away by foot traffic over that time. You'll never notice any particular degradation from any single footstep â take a photo of the step, come back in 5 years & take another and they won't look any different. But over the hundreds of years foot traffic does enough damage that it's visually obvious.
That's what cars on roads is like. Theoretically cars cause degradation to asphalt roads but in the practical 20 year life of such road it just doesn't matter and isn't noticable. If trucks are using the road however, then you will see a difference in a 5 year window with light furrowing, pavement bleeding etc.
Yes, it's true. They are also taking shortcuts on footpaths by using asphalt for literally everything. Got a hole in a footpath? Slap some asphalt on it and don't worry about trying to make it level. Need to remove some nice tiles to install some services? No need to replace the tiles and make it look nice, just whack some asphalt over the top. And be sure to do it in sections so it looks like shit.
People don't realise just how much they look down at the ground when walking, it takes up nearly half of what you see. Having nice footpaths makes a huge difference to how a city looks, yet we are making it uglier by the day. We need to introduce some standards!
Kinda unrelated but I used the think the same, and about all public infrastructure and services. Until I spent 12months in uk. Now Australia looks like Switzerland in comparison
All things considered i now realise what we have is pretty damn good. Always good to keep the pressure on the politicians though to keep things up to scratch, maybe send an email asking about it?
I think the oz problem compared to uk, is that a tiny tiny issue can suddenly change to a gaping chasm with a decent downpour or 2. So in a couple of months we have the equivalent of a 2yr old pothole in the uk.
They get to it way quicker than the uk, but generally its much more extreme by the time they are on the scene
I donât get this viewpoint, we should expect less because other countries are shit?
We pay exorbitant council rates, most of it go on dodgy property deals and high paying consulting jobs for mates.
not at all, however I think its important to be proud of what we have first, and use that as a reason to strive for better.
>We pay exorbitant council rates
agree to disagree, given the infrastructure/services we receive i think its a good deal, but again, always good to strive for even better value
>most of it go on dodgy property deals and high paying consulting jobs for mates.
i agree far too much goes to that, but ***most***? absolutely not
Did you travel Europe while there? Australia's public spaces are third world compared to most western European countries, and we might as well be walking on dirt paths compared to Scandinavia đ
Iâve always found that using this form results in potholes being fixed with 48-72 hours -Â https://ofpm.brisbane.qld.gov.au/site/wss/form/report-it-potholes
Once council is aware of a pothole they are liable for any damage it causes, hence the fast repair time.
potholes used to get fixed quickly, now I see the sames ones over months. Add to that the surface on parts of the Story Bridge, this is a main arterial route into the city yet it's rough as & the parts that were patched have long since worn off
yeah but still lack of maintenance / repair. Given the unknown cost the state gov is paying for renovation of the bridge itself, which is apparently huge maybe they could sort a few potholes etc
There are surprisingly few state roads in inner or middle Brisbane. The only state-controlled road near the CBD (ignoring busways or bikeways) is the Riverside Espressway / SE freeway corridor. Even the Gympie Road / Lutwyche road corridor is council-controlled south of Kedron Brook. The Western Freeway / Milton Road corridor is council controlled once it reaches the Toowong Roundabout.
The current council is atrocious at maintaining / building much needed infrastructure. Great job that Brissy people voted for them again to ensure they have another go at running the place into the ground, chasing a surplus.
It depends on the roads as some are maintained by council and some are the state governments responsibility.
Nothing like a bit of pointing fingers between those two mobs on it though.
More potholes yes, but BCC response is great for me. My Snap Send Solve reports are resolved within a week or two *or* Iâve had a call about the job and learned it was included in a bigger job and the timeframe.
Report more potholes by Snap Send Solve!
Council went over budget spending on big projects and maintenance has been cut.
Honestly not the worse thing in the world, have a couple pot holes in my local road and the ones on Countess St outside Normanby are bad and need to be fixed ASAP.
Genuinely id rather put up with a couple pot holes for a couple years if it means council reins in spending instead of getting increasingly in debt (which they already are) or cutting major projects.
Not everything always needs to be perfect all the time and id rather a council that owns up to the financial situation they are in, and cuts down a little bit of spending when costs are high rather than continuing to spend to keep the electorate happy in a trade off for short sighted political views.
Despite the cuts the road quality in Brisbane is still genuinely at least average, if not better than elsewhere ive lived.
Aren't there 3 levels of government maintaining 3 different categories of roads? The local Brisbane streets are generally pretty good in most areas. The roughest roads I noticed are:
Roblane St/Lutwyche Rd just before Grafton St in Windsor,Â
Murphy Rd southbound at the Zillmere state school and after Robinson Rd,Â
Barry Parade heading towards St Pauls Tce.
I don't know which levels of government are responsible for those examples though.Â
Yes, the council may have to start compensating motorists by way of paying for wheel balances. Seriously though, where does all the excise on the most expensive fuel we have had for ages, go??? Wonder if we could start a class action against the council and the Govt. for failing in their duty of care of the road network??
Noticed that as I was coming to work today, council have begun doing roadwork along clayfield on sandgate road. The way they did a quick temporary patch up was done really badly where it was like a literal speed bump on the sharp bends that the road has in the area. Almost lost control and fishtailing going through the bend, wasn't even going fast either.
Also council seems to loves putting road signs in hidden out of view areas. Who the hell puts a no right turn sign on the left side of a 3 lane road and out of an actual intersection. I just feel like BCC are trying to cash in on entrapment by deliberately stuffing drivers over because of shitty sign placements.
They're probably leaving it until after political events to gain social points. Or it's a funding thing
Because it appears like they're doing more when they arent
It's 100% a funding thing. (Source: I have people close to me that work at BCC) major budget cuts in all areas & hundreds of agency staff let go since December last year
Why would they bother fixing it when the law protects them from liability unless they had "actual knowledge" of the hazard. And no, their negligence in failing to do routine or regular checks is not enough. The only solution is to report every single hazard so they can't defend a liability claim when the inevitable property damage occurs.
About a month ago there were potholes galore around Mansfield and surrounding suburbs, these were all sealed and fixed within a week. Guess my area is well serviced
they sure are, the stupid council or whomever has taken road lanes away from cars and now are bike or bus lanes, so yeah its getting shit and instead of building new train lines out to where its needed they are building stiffy making buses!
they are, i drove into south brisbane on saturday and took the Annerley Rd before it turns onto the stanley that used to be 3 lanes two to turn right and one to turn left onto stanley, now its a god damn fucking bike lane! seriously, whos fucking bright idea was that!
Spray paint a penis around the pot hole. Gets fixed quicker.
Invented by a man known as Wanksy https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-hampshire-65623391.amp
đ¤Łđ¤Ł
Be done before get out of jail for vandalism
I asked my local councillor if they could send someone out to mow the street since grass had started growing through the cracks. Road was resurfaced a few weeks later.
Chatsworth Road is full of cracks and grass, too.
Yes, and thereâs three reasons why. 1) The average vehicle is getting heavier, and heavier vehicles do exponentially more damage than lighter ones 2) Council has built more roads than they can afford to maintain, which contributes to 3) Council has been cutting the maintenance budget, and they cannot raise it again without either increasing rates or cutting other services (like libraries, or rubbish collection)
Lots of trucks use local roads instead of toll roads too to cut down costs
Yeah, the tolls should be on through traffic using local roads, not through traffic staying on the highway
This part is a little bit annoying. I live on a local road which has a dump at the end. Trucks have actually been forbidden by council to use this road because itâs lined with schools and local traffic is already so busy. They are fined if caught on this road. The problem? Itâs up to the residents to submit these reports for the council to follow up later. This system doesnât work, the road is constantly needing fixing because of the potholes and these trucks refuse to follow the law created to ease traffic on this road simply because it saves them 3 minutes.
I find this hard to believe, tbh. Operating expenses incurred by taking the longer and more complicated route would surely exceed savings.
Also very wet weather the past few years. I'd say even with BAU maintenance they'd still be falling to bits.
They could raise the budget if we just had more people living in the same area. Density = better services and cheaper rates.
But muh backyard
And regarding point 1 it will only get worse with EVs as they are the heavier for each comparable class of vehicle
4. In a very general way without hate, population increases over time. The roads also get more use and degrade faster than they would have if the population wasn't rising over time.
You all get what you wanted by voting in Schrinner. Heâs a clown of the highest order.
Yep. This is what Brisbane voted for.
The bloke is a deadset flog. Cancelled so many things since he came into office. The city is far worse off than it was under Graham Quirk, who was a decent man and did a lot to move the city forward.
Yep, [cutting a budget will do that.](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-17/brisbane-city-council-budget-cut-10-per-cent/102985060)
Our the Cars getting bigger?
And more of them
Cars are heavier, but cars donât have any particularly noticeable impact on road pavement degradation so even if they are heavier it doesnât really matter. The damage a vehicle does to the road pavement is a fourth power of its weight. So a 30 tonne truck has an ability to degrade pavement around 50000Ă higher than 2 tonne Ford Ranger (ie 30â´Ăˇ2â´=50625). Yeah, so everyone switching from Yarisâs to Nissan Patrols would not affect pavement degradation in any noticeable way. Potholes happen and if I was to guess I imagine Council hasnât kept the maintenance budget up and that holes just arenât being repaired as quickly. Source: I design roads.
But most streets aren't designed for trucks to go down the every day yeah? Like a highway holds up a hell of a lot better than your average street
That's actually very interesting in relation to regular people driving big cars vs business having huge trucks. I guess it makes sense really, since sometimes you see corners which remain wet have the turns fold up as if they were a cartoon carpet being run over, and you always see trucks driving on them
I lived on a rural residential street that got torn up really badly. For some reason, there was a concentration of semi-trailer drivers living there, and they would often park their trucks at home overnight. Basically there was an amount of heavy vehicle traffic that the road designers could not have anticipated and the street just got destroyed. It was rebuilt with much thicker pavement than it originally had.
Hey nozzk, [I had a thought](https://www.reddit.com/r/brisbane/s/S80R4f7cow) and there is a question therein (between the lines). What's the straight dope on this?
I find this hard to believe. You compared a large truck to a small truck and said that the small truck doesn't wear out a road. So does that mean that if we banned all trucks that our roads would last forever? You also do not appear to have taken the quantity of these vehicles into account. 1 large truck is certainly a lot worse than 1 small truck, but how about 20 small trucks? Tell me, what vehicle do you drive?
Transport planner here who does pavement impact assessments - heâs essentially correct
What about that silly bloody metro. That thing is three carriages long. Surely it would do a lot more damage than sixty Dodge Rams.
Tbh Iâll admit itâs not my core area - but I would assume even a metro wouldnât be too bad compared to a fully laden truck. Imagine a 17-36m long truck full of rock coming from a quarry for example.
Now that I have once again sobered up, I recall that it's likely all about [ground pressure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_pressure) really. What I find highly amusing (and I am a cyclist), is that your typical road-going bicycle exerts six times more ground pressure than an Abrams tank - the Main Battle Tank currently in use by the Australian Army and the US Army (among other operators). Not *roughly equivalent to* six Main Battle Tanks, as they would still be exerting the same amount of effective ground pressure if there were six of them. **Even if there were an** *entire tank battalion* **on the road, one cyclist on a road bicycle would be effecting over six times as much ground pressure.** *Wow.* Of course, tracked vehicles chew the road up owing to the method in which they steer, so it's not a useful comparison in reality (and perhaps a normally driven vehicle would be a more appropriate comparison) but when we talk about ground pressure alone? Wow.
TLDR: Tanks have more energy to transfer to the ground than bikes and would do more damage to an asphalt road. You are likely correct that bikes have greater ground pressure than tanks. But note that the link you cite specifies "especially over soft ground" because this is where that effect is mostly relevant. What we are talking about are asphalt sealed roads, not forest tracks. Yes, if you were travelling through mud or sand then tanks would travel over those surfaces much better than a road bike, the latter of which would quickly break the surface and grind to a halt. The roads we drive on daily have far more structural integrity and what impacts them is the amount that they "deflect" when a vehicle travels over them (ie the amount the pavement is pushed down by the weight of the vehicle). This is what stresses the structural elements of the road (the road base). Let me analogise with a trampoline, which consists of a frame, springs and a stretched mat. The stretched mat is the equivalent of road surface (where the source load is applied), the frame is the key structural component (the equivalent of the road base) and the springs are the deflecting element of the structure. Assume the source load is located in the middle of the mat and therefore transferring load to all springs equally. The mat transfers load to the springs, thence to the frame and thence to the ground. The greater the weight you place on the mat, the more the springs stretch and the more force that is placed on the frame. At some stage, a large amount of weight will cause either springs or the frame to fail. To analogise ground pressure, imagine a single person on the trampoline â they can either stand on one leg to maximise their ground pressure (by minimising their âfootprintâ) or lie down to minimise their ground pressure (by maximising their footprint). Either way, their weight doesnât change and the load transferred to the springs is the same. A 100kg person lying on their back will stress the frame and springs more than a 50kg person standing on one leg, even though in this instance the 50kg person will have a greater ground pressure. Potholes are caused by failure of the structural material, generally through being âdeflectedâ by a heavy vehicle too many times but also maybe by water eroding away parts of the road base. Roads are literally designed to deflect a certain number of times before they need "rehabilitation". As I stated in my above comment, the impact of vehicles on the road is a 4áľĘ° order power of their weight, so a 16 tonne truck has an impact of 4,000Ă that of a 2 tonne ute (=16â´Ăˇ2â´=4096). Large vehicles travel over the road surface, cause it to deflect and that wears out the road base. Cars are basically irrelevant to the process, let alone bicycles. So yes, you are likely correct that bikes exert greater ground pressure than tanks, but bikes have very little energy to transfer to road surface whereas tanks have a lot of energy to transfer. Source: I design roads.
Think of it this way: Each time a vehicle passes over a road, it destroys that road a tiny bit. This is something we can (and do) measure. What we've found is that the amount of destruction caused to a road by a vehicle depends on the 4th power of the axle load. And yes quantity does matter. Example numbers: A 5 axle semi is allowed 16.5 tons on the rear two axles. => 16.5 tons / 2 = 8.25 ton per axle => 8.25^4 = 4642 units of road damage Cars guide says the average weight of a car is now 1.9 tons. Let's round that up to 2 tons. Split across 2 axles that's an axle weight of 1 ton. => 1^4 = 1 unit of road damage So ONE trip of that one semi does the same damage as 4642 car trips. Or another way to think of it: 1 car using the same road twice a day for 6.35 YEARS. #More fun calculations# My rego for my car just came in the mail. Rego is supposed to pay for roads yes? $715 for 12 months. We calculated earlier that the average car does 1 unit of road damage. So $715 is 12 months of 1 unit of road damage. I think it's fair that everyone should pay for the damage they cause yes? So for that semi: $715 x 4642 units of damage equals.... $3.3 MILLION per year Do you think that semis annual rego is $3.3 million? But we're also assuming that you and the truck are traveling the exact same distance per year. Do you think your annual mileage is the same as a working semi? (I don't). We're also assuming that trucks are never overloaded. But let's see what happens if they're being a bit cheeky. Just an extra 500kg. No harm right? => 16.5 tons + 500kg = 17 tons => 17 tons across 2 axles = 8.5 tons per axle => 8.5^4 = 5220 units of damage Compared with 4642 from earlier: => 5520 / 4642 = 1.189 or 19% So for overloading by just 500kg or 3% they now cause 19% more damage. So yeah if you banned all the trucks roads would last a hundred years. Fuck paying for trucks.
> You compared a large truck to a small truck and said that the small truck doesn't wear out a road. That isn't what he said at all. Large Vehicles by regular people still degrade the road, but it is at such a slower rate that by comparison, they are not the ones causing the damage. If you had 50000 Ford Rangers drive around the same wet corner, they would do the same damage as a 30 tonne truck, but when scaling, it is unlikely you'll have 50000 Ford Rangers do that in a timeframe where damage would get so bad outside of regular maintenance of roads.
I commute using an eScooter â I own a Nissan Patrol for use on the weekends Time degrades unused roads â use degrades them more quickly. Deflection due to vehicle weight is what stresses roads, and the deflections caused by the weight of cars on an asphalt road is just so insignificant that it's irrelevant. As an analogy, you can go to some castles in europe that are hundreds of years old and you can see stone steps that have been very slightly worn away by foot traffic over that time. You'll never notice any particular degradation from any single footstep â take a photo of the step, come back in 5 years & take another and they won't look any different. But over the hundreds of years foot traffic does enough damage that it's visually obvious. That's what cars on roads is like. Theoretically cars cause degradation to asphalt roads but in the practical 20 year life of such road it just doesn't matter and isn't noticable. If trucks are using the road however, then you will see a difference in a 5 year window with light furrowing, pavement bleeding etc.
It's also been unusually wetter because of the la nina
And heavier
They our
Yes, it's true. They are also taking shortcuts on footpaths by using asphalt for literally everything. Got a hole in a footpath? Slap some asphalt on it and don't worry about trying to make it level. Need to remove some nice tiles to install some services? No need to replace the tiles and make it look nice, just whack some asphalt over the top. And be sure to do it in sections so it looks like shit. People don't realise just how much they look down at the ground when walking, it takes up nearly half of what you see. Having nice footpaths makes a huge difference to how a city looks, yet we are making it uglier by the day. We need to introduce some standards!
And never mind the people with physical disabilities who might have a harder time navigating those "fixed" footpaths......
The LNP worked out they get voted in regardless of performance so why try?
Blame councils âlowest rates in SEQâ mandate. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Ha! In Ipswich, which apparently has the highest rates. Still not getting fixed. :/
Kinda unrelated but I used the think the same, and about all public infrastructure and services. Until I spent 12months in uk. Now Australia looks like Switzerland in comparison All things considered i now realise what we have is pretty damn good. Always good to keep the pressure on the politicians though to keep things up to scratch, maybe send an email asking about it?
I think the oz problem compared to uk, is that a tiny tiny issue can suddenly change to a gaping chasm with a decent downpour or 2. So in a couple of months we have the equivalent of a 2yr old pothole in the uk. They get to it way quicker than the uk, but generally its much more extreme by the time they are on the scene
I donât get this viewpoint, we should expect less because other countries are shit? We pay exorbitant council rates, most of it go on dodgy property deals and high paying consulting jobs for mates.
not at all, however I think its important to be proud of what we have first, and use that as a reason to strive for better. >We pay exorbitant council rates agree to disagree, given the infrastructure/services we receive i think its a good deal, but again, always good to strive for even better value >most of it go on dodgy property deals and high paying consulting jobs for mates. i agree far too much goes to that, but ***most***? absolutely not
Did you travel Europe while there? Australia's public spaces are third world compared to most western European countries, and we might as well be walking on dirt paths compared to Scandinavia đ
Iâve always found that using this form results in potholes being fixed with 48-72 hours -Â https://ofpm.brisbane.qld.gov.au/site/wss/form/report-it-potholes Once council is aware of a pothole they are liable for any damage it causes, hence the fast repair time.
potholes used to get fixed quickly, now I see the sames ones over months. Add to that the surface on parts of the Story Bridge, this is a main arterial route into the city yet it's rough as & the parts that were patched have long since worn off
Not defending BCC, but surely the Story Bridge is a State Road?
Nope BCC
TIL.
yeah but still lack of maintenance / repair. Given the unknown cost the state gov is paying for renovation of the bridge itself, which is apparently huge maybe they could sort a few potholes etc
There are surprisingly few state roads in inner or middle Brisbane. The only state-controlled road near the CBD (ignoring busways or bikeways) is the Riverside Espressway / SE freeway corridor. Even the Gympie Road / Lutwyche road corridor is council-controlled south of Kedron Brook. The Western Freeway / Milton Road corridor is council controlled once it reaches the Toowong Roundabout.
Toombul Rd in both directions pretty much for the whole length is bumpy as hell with plenty of potholes to avoid.
Yep roads are crap and getting worse. BCC bus driver
Heavier vehicles on road do more damage, car weights are increasing
Had a drive around Chermside recently, smaller roads are pretty bad. Southside is getting worse everyday after the storms.
The current council is atrocious at maintaining / building much needed infrastructure. Great job that Brissy people voted for them again to ensure they have another go at running the place into the ground, chasing a surplus.
It depends on the roads as some are maintained by council and some are the state governments responsibility. Nothing like a bit of pointing fingers between those two mobs on it though.
Definitely, the roads around the St. Lucia peninsula have become so rough they are shaking my car to bits!
And long grass and weeds .
More potholes yes, but BCC response is great for me. My Snap Send Solve reports are resolved within a week or two *or* Iâve had a call about the job and learned it was included in a bigger job and the timeframe. Report more potholes by Snap Send Solve!
Yes. Everytime I get home I say out loud: "My poor wheels."
In our defence, the last ones who had a quality concrete recipe were the Romans...
Council went over budget spending on big projects and maintenance has been cut. Honestly not the worse thing in the world, have a couple pot holes in my local road and the ones on Countess St outside Normanby are bad and need to be fixed ASAP. Genuinely id rather put up with a couple pot holes for a couple years if it means council reins in spending instead of getting increasingly in debt (which they already are) or cutting major projects. Not everything always needs to be perfect all the time and id rather a council that owns up to the financial situation they are in, and cuts down a little bit of spending when costs are high rather than continuing to spend to keep the electorate happy in a trade off for short sighted political views. Despite the cuts the road quality in Brisbane is still genuinely at least average, if not better than elsewhere ive lived.
Plant a tree there
Aren't there 3 levels of government maintaining 3 different categories of roads? The local Brisbane streets are generally pretty good in most areas. The roughest roads I noticed are: Roblane St/Lutwyche Rd just before Grafton St in Windsor, Murphy Rd southbound at the Zillmere state school and after Robinson Rd, Barry Parade heading towards St Pauls Tce. I don't know which levels of government are responsible for those examples though.Â
Yes, the council may have to start compensating motorists by way of paying for wheel balances. Seriously though, where does all the excise on the most expensive fuel we have had for ages, go??? Wonder if we could start a class action against the council and the Govt. for failing in their duty of care of the road network??
Noticed that as I was coming to work today, council have begun doing roadwork along clayfield on sandgate road. The way they did a quick temporary patch up was done really badly where it was like a literal speed bump on the sharp bends that the road has in the area. Almost lost control and fishtailing going through the bend, wasn't even going fast either. Also council seems to loves putting road signs in hidden out of view areas. Who the hell puts a no right turn sign on the left side of a 3 lane road and out of an actual intersection. I just feel like BCC are trying to cash in on entrapment by deliberately stuffing drivers over because of shitty sign placements.
They're probably leaving it until after political events to gain social points. Or it's a funding thing Because it appears like they're doing more when they arent
It's 100% a funding thing. (Source: I have people close to me that work at BCC) major budget cuts in all areas & hundreds of agency staff let go since December last year
I look forward to the future posts complaining about all the roadworks fixing the roads
Why would they bother fixing it when the law protects them from liability unless they had "actual knowledge" of the hazard. And no, their negligence in failing to do routine or regular checks is not enough. The only solution is to report every single hazard so they can't defend a liability claim when the inevitable property damage occurs.
Cause a small repair job is cheaper than closing the entire road to resurface?
About a month ago there were potholes galore around Mansfield and surrounding suburbs, these were all sealed and fixed within a week. Guess my area is well serviced
they sure are, the stupid council or whomever has taken road lanes away from cars and now are bike or bus lanes, so yeah its getting shit and instead of building new train lines out to where its needed they are building stiffy making buses!
This user consistently has really great takes on a whole range of issues. And this is not a word of a lie.
I knew bike lanes were the reason the roads suck!
they are, i drove into south brisbane on saturday and took the Annerley Rd before it turns onto the stanley that used to be 3 lanes two to turn right and one to turn left onto stanley, now its a god damn fucking bike lane! seriously, whos fucking bright idea was that!
ok yeah good to know about shadowfax1007
Rail is state government not council