The AA has said that the UK’s roads remain dangerous, badly repaired and its roadworks are poorly coordinated.
According to the organisation’s president Edmund King, drivers and fleet operators are faced with a road network that’s at breaking point, despite paying billions to the Government in tax each year.
King says that the country risks treating roads as a “periphery issue” when in reality they are fundamental to everyday life and the economy.
“Our country without roads is nothing; 90% of freight goes by road and 86% of passenger journeys are by road,” said King. “If we didn’t have the roads, the country would be at a standstill. There would be no goods in our shops, no exports, and people wouldn’t get to work. This isn’t a periphery issue, this is the number one issue.”
Last year AA patrols were called out to more than 600,000 pothole-related incidents, including punctures, damaged wheels, steering and suspension damage.
King said drivers were paying the price for a failed “patch and run” approach, where holes are filled badly and return within weeks.
King called for councils and central government to move away from reactive repairs and towards proper road maintenance, resurfacing and better use of technology.
“It is the number one transport issue for 96% of drivers. At the AA we see it first-hand. You can’t just keep filling in holes if the road has gone. You need to resurface that section of road. In the long term that is more cost-effective because you are called out less often, there are fewer compensation claims and the repair lasts longer. It is not rocket science to fix the roads, and yet we are doing a bad job of it.”
James Barwise, policy lead at the Road Haulage Association (RHA), said: “We have long-standing concerns about the state of our roads with congestion costing the UK economy more than £30bn every year.
“Local authorities should be equipped with the latest technology for longer lasting and more cost-effective road maintenance, and we urge DfT to work with local decisionmakers to fast-track these processes. We repeat our call on local authorities to ringfence pothole funding for longer term fixes.”
