Criminally poor road resurfacing

[Serendipity]

I got up early this morning and went for a blast. After warming up on some local roads I decided to head off towards Oxford on the A40. After passing through Stokenchurch I took the turning passed the big tower towards Aston Hill (great set of bends on a steep, wooded hill) and just before I reached the start of the twisty bits I got vigorously flashed by a van coming the other way.

He obviously meant business and I was moving at quite a pace so I slowed down just before seeing a change in the road surface ahead. Level with the new surface was a small sign cautioning 10mph max speed. I rolled onto the new surface at nearly 8 times that speed to find it was like riding on sand! I gently braked using mostly the rear and stopped in a lay-by to have a closer look at this wonder of road technology.

They had simply sprayed a thin layer of tar on the road and covered it with stone chips. According to Wikipedia this is called Bituminous Surface Treatment, but I call it lethal. I’ve seen (and whinged) about this type of resurfacing before, but this is the worst that I’ve seen. The road was fully cool, but the tar was still highly liquid with a consistency like Marmite. It also wasn’t very sticky; I was able to wipe it off my finger easily.

Over the next few days cars will form tyre tracks in the road and mounds of loose chip will form in-between the tracks. It’s just cheap and lazy! It’s turned a fun bit of road into a death trap.

If you plan to head between Oxford and High Wycombe take a different route. I don’t know how far the resurfacing extends because I turned around and headed back London bound.
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[bazza]

They did this to a dually I used to commute on a few years back. It soon earned the name of "Sniper Alley" because every journey along it was punctuated with "ting!" and "crack!" from impacts of the stones flicked up by vehicles on both sides of the road.

The surfacing lasted less than a year before it shredded itself to pieces and the whole carriageway had to be stripped back and resurfaced properly.

Glad is wasn't my council tax that was pished away on that little project, but no doubt someone made a fat wad out of it.
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[quik_d]

same thing happened to me, come off a roundabout, then about 100 metres later the road turn to the left and went up a hill, wasn't till i was turning into the corner there were any sgns of this sh*t. And thats exactly what it is! Doesn't last 5 minutes
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LOOK AT DAT M8 WELL LUSH A PARROT INT IT

[KLR600]

unfortunately this is the most used of resurfacing roads up by me It really sucks and I've often seen roads in worse condition after a few months after getting this treatment than they were before the tar and chips.

What I hate is when the chips have been down a few days and the cars have made their tracks but all the loose chippings pile up in the middle of the road on corners and it's like riding through thick sand. They always seem to do it to my favourite roads aswell
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[Ichy]

When the roads around by us were done the guy over the road, another biker, phoned the council and after 3 days, which they said was required for the surface to bed, they sent a road sweeper to clean the loose chippings. The sweeper turned up every day for two weeks.

[iooi]

All they need to do with these surfaces is run a road roller over them and it would bed the chips straight in and not cause any issues. Such as chipped windscreans or such.....
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[KTM Gordo]

It's a very common way of improving the adhesion of a road's surface, and if done properly works very well. The road near my parents' house was done at least ten years ago and although it's showing some wear now, it's worked well.

When the dressing has just been put down, the chips are very loose as they tend to let vehicles bed them in. In a week or so they should send a road sweeper to sweep up any chippings that remain loose.

The warning signs should be a reasonable distance before the section that's been dressed to allow you time to slow down, and at 10 mph you shouldn't have much trouble.

If this technique didn't work, they wouldn't use it. Simple.
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[lurker]

[Luke_Retrofly]

Hi
seems berkshire and surrey county councils are spending the rest of their budget on this, there must be at least a dozen roads with this on and another half a dozen to be closed, are closed or have been closed for re-surfacing.

Luke

[Essex_Mike]

They've used that type of resurfacing on a road near me. At the time I swore like hell, as the tyres wouldn't grip at all.

But now that the stones have been brushed away it is a very nice bit of road to go along.
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[St0rmer66]

They just did this along the A59 in the area closest to Skipton. Used to be a nice straight road with a good view (but it was stupid to go faster than the 60mph limit/NSL because of so many coppers with speedguns down there). Now it's like a building site with horrible tar like surface and some stones thrown at it . It's got a temporary 40mph limit on it at the moment but we were having to go along the tyre tracks of a car in front to even get the slightest bit of grip.

I don't even know why they've resurfaced it as it was a VERY smooth road before! Now it's worse than it was. Such a waste of money.
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[JonB]

They ALWAYS do this every summer. You should have been more aware when you saw the 10MPH signs.

Like someone else said, they are a cost effective and decent way of road surfacing, there is a road quite near me that had this done 10 years ago and is still doing well.

There are about a dozen roads in the area that are currently "chipping".

If they were to do it with proper tarmac and asphalt you are looking at 2 weeks work for 1 road :S, just takes too much time.
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[iooi]

[ncrn]

I live a bit west of oxford and they do this all the time around me. Fortunatley they give you a fair warning near me so you have time to slow up. I've found leave the road for a month or so and come back and its good to ride on.
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