Road maintenance planning at county level

Good jib! · 05-06-2019 2:13pm #1

How is road maintenance planned at the county level?

Does the relevant council have a 5/10/25 year plan to renew road surfaces? Or do they do an analysis of road conditions and weigh it up against the number of users (a pothole on a boreen obviously being lower down the list than a pothole on a major road)? A mix of the above?

Or is it really, as a lot of people would suggest, just a question of having a councillor in your area who'll sort you out/vociferous Facebook group/ringing Joe Duffy/whoever moans the loudest?

05-06-2019 2:59pm

Good jib! wrote: »

How is road maintenance planned at the county level?

Does the relevant council have a 5/10/25 year plan to renew road surfaces? Or do they do an analysis of road conditions and weigh it up against the number of users (a pothole on a boreen obviously being lower down the list than a pothole on a major road)? A mix of the above?

Or is it really, as a lot of people would suggest, just a question of having a councillor in your area who'll sort you out/vociferous Facebook group/ringing Joe Duffy/whoever moans the loudest?

All of the above

Councillors also have a discretionary fund of council spending allocated to them on an annual basis that they can choose to spend as they wish. Some use it for parks, lighting, roads etc

loyatemu · 13-06-2019 11:01am

there's clearly a schedule as I've often seen roads with perfectly decent surfaces getting the dreaded "surface dressing" (tar & chippings) presumably because it was X no. of years since they were previously surfaced.

13-06-2019 3:47pm

loyatemu wrote: »

there's clearly a schedule as I've often seen roads with perfectly decent surfaces getting the dreaded "surface dressing" (tar & chippings) presumably because it was X no. of years since they were previously surfaced.

Yup, this is done to extend the life of the underlying surface which is vastly more expensive.

Good jib! · 14-06-2019 2:00pm

So the gist of it is, if I were to ring my local council, they should technically be able to say that road 'X' is scheduled to be repaired/redone completely in year X?

14-06-2019 3:46pm

Good jib! wrote: »

So the gist of it is, if I were to ring my local council, they should technically be able to say that road 'X' is scheduled to be repaired/redone completely in year X?

Yes and no.

While regional and local primary routes will likely have very defined schedules, local secondary will likely be done on an ad hoc basis and local tertiary routes are probably only done upon representation and if there is resources available.

You also have to consider that they do surveys every few years which can move routes up or down the list of priorities.

Talking to the Roads dept of the council would be a good starting point.