This Road is Due For Replacement in 174 Years...

I was recently called by Meridian TV to discuss the state of Kent's roads, and the backlog of repairs needed in the area. There has been a recent AA report about a £200 million repair backlog across the Country, and here in Kent, a massive £27.8 million has recently been spent not on road repairs, but on merging the existing highways offices into 2 "super-depots" - a plan that seems to generate no direct cost savings!

Researching the current backlog on Kent Road Maintenance led me to the grippingly titled "Local Transport Plan for Kent (2006-2011)" which does calculate the backlog of Highways and other maintenance, and works out the effective life cycles that roads, footpaths and other Highways facilities are actually on one current expenditure.

If you drive in Shepway, the following figures may not surprise you, but here goes. According to the report at:

http://www.kent.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/5A8CDF82-3DB2-4179-BB8B-583DDADCBA1A/0/app3tamp.pdf

...the Highways repairs stands at around £174.4 million at today's prices (page 37).

Current expenditure is not helping deal with the backlog.

The average highway road life cycle was meant to be 50 years (time from building until full replacement) but is now calculated at... 174 years! (page 45) In 174 years, will we still need roads?!

Page 52 prices the footpaths repair backlog at £40m. Page 54 has a great quote in the summary - the path average life cycle is 226 years! A footpath built in 1782 (some 20 years before the construction of the Martello Towers and Royal Military Canal to protect us from Napoleon!) would be, on Kent's figures, due to be replaced round about now...

Average life cycles for Kent for some other items:

• 317 years for drainage gullies and pipes (a mere 63 for soakaways) - page 55
• 79 years for signs and bollards - page 56
• 148 years for safety fences - page 57
• 27 years for a road line marking!!! - page 58 - or 75 years for a road stud!

The report was written a couple of years ago, but actually, that's likely to make the REAL costs of repairs (and therefore backlogs) higher rather than lower.

On top of that, in Shepway don't forget that Romney Marsh in particular has many unadopted roads which Kent have not taken responsibility for and therefore don't even make it into these figures!

The evidence of our local roads was clearly that Kent were falling behind in maintaining roads. However, the figures actually show its much worse than that - Kent Roads are not falling behind - they're falling apart. It's time they got a grip.