Winter road damagi will cost over El°Om
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SNOW and ice has left Britain's local authorities with a £125m bill for repairing the roads and clearing snow.
Nationwide on all types of roads, melting snow is revealing pot-holes and a general break-up of the road surface. The damage is primarily caused by the 10 per cent expansion of water as it freezes in the cracks and breaks up the surface.
The British Road Federation has compared this winter with that of 1962/3, when the following year saw a 25 per cent increase in road maintenance costs. Basing its calculations on this, the BRF estimate that this year it will cost £125m to repair the roads.
This bill has to be footed mostly by the local authorities, who have already had to undertake one bout of costly snow clearing and road gritting and salting.
With a 14 per cent cut-back in road maintenance budgets over the past five years, combined with a five per cent increase in traffic volume, many authorities may not be able to afford such repairs.
Faced with this problem, they may have to either use next year's maintenance allocation or approach central government for help.
BRF director Robert Phillipson has asked Transport Secretary William Rodgers to make a statement about any Government intentions regarding repair costs. "Money could easily made available for road I pairs. Over the past thr years, the Department Transport has underspent roads budget by more th £300m.
"These funds could be us to help hard-pressed lot authorities in providi special aid for country road he said.
A Department of Transpc spokesman said that the were no proposals at prese to help local authorities wi the cost of repairs.
He said it was up to the i dividual authorities to r allocate their transpo budget to increase maint nance expenditure at the e pense of something else.