26 February (Part 4) - Blocked roads. Not what they are cracked up to be
A Labour councillor told me last August that Bexley council had not
noticed that their newly blocked Arnsberg Way was breaking up at its junction
with Woolwich Road until they saw
the BiB report.
The council made a point of saying the junction would be duly repaired at no cost to
taxpayers and, if I remember correctly, issued a press release to that effect. The road was duly repaired and
it promptly broke up again.
At the recent
Places Scrutiny meeting it was said that the problem is one of
design, not construction. I hope Bexley council is going to apologise to
F.M. Conway and reimburse them the repair costs.
So now that Bexley council has learned the hard way what in my day every
schoolboy knew, that a big bus wheel on full lock destroys roads, what are they
going to do about it?
Replace with tarmac!
This
week’s Public Notices tell us when.
The junction with Woolwich Road will be closed off and the current one way section will be made
two way so that residents at the southern end can get home. Everyone will suffer
another eight weeks of disruption.
I believe the new junction will be a raised platform with the traditional, but
probably coloured, tarmacadam surface to ensure that bus passengers can continue
to get as rough a ride as they do over blocks.
This will be the third time that junction has been significantly reconstructed in fewer than 20 months.
John Loudon McAdam must be laughing in his grave.