14 April (Part 1) - Relaying good surfaces?
It’s
hard to be precise but something between one in 500 and one in 1,000 people who visit
this site use the Contact page. The most common grouse is unnecessary fiddling
with the road network. Earlier this week I was tipped off that Townley Road was
about to be resurfaced when there was nothing visibly wrong with it. With so
much going on in recent days I didn’t get out with my camera until this morning.
Sure enough the carriageway nearest the Central Library and the whole of the corner
that is immediately behind the camera position was nice and new. I have no way
of telling if the surface looked good before but there is no reason to suspect
my informant was mistaken. However I am going to give Bexley council the benefit
of the doubt on this one.
The northern section of Townley Road has in recent years been changed from a
cull-de-sac where the disabled and elderly could be
dropped off right outside the Shopping Mall to a bus only area with routes that
had previously bypassed it diverted there every few minutes.
When I was a kid and lived close to a major bus station I used to watch the road
surface migrate where several buses each minute would turn sharply to enter. It
took only a few months for a flat road to become a ten inch high curved ridge
under the pressure of the turning wheels. The road was constantly being repaired.
Maybe Townley Road was showing signs of the same thing.