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TOPIC: Current State of the Roads in East Renfrewshire
Current State of the Roads in East Renfrewshire 7 years, 10 months ago #1
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A few candidates for the up-coming elections have mentioned the state of the roads.
Perhaps all candidates could comment on what they would do differently? There is a list known as the carriageway assessment of roads to be considered for future resurfacing. Currently Viaduct Road is at no. 145, Linwood Avenue is at no. 245 and Overlee Road is at 258 of 370 locations on the carriageway assessment of roads to be considered for future resurfacing. The questions asked were an attempt to get a timescale to be associated with the numbers for the roads on the list. Environment Department - Environmental Services and Roads - April 2017 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .....there is no programme extending into the future. [East Renfrewshire]Councillors agreed, many years ago, that all that was required was a recommendation, in March each year, of what schemes would be included within the following year’s programme. Councillors also set a Policy that the recommendations would be based on an assessment following an agreed methodology which considers factors such as overall condition, usage, presence of traffic generators (schools, shopping areas, residential care establishments, etc.) and position within the network (strategic ‘A’ road through to residential cul-de-sac). The programme must, of course, be containable within the indicative budget for the following year. The submitted programme also takes into account additional factors: known significant works by developers, utilities, etc.; network disruption; availability of diversion routes; sectional elements within individual roads; annual expenditure on safety repairs; etc.. These factors change annually, sometimes monthly, and can mean that schemes with higher assessments are deferred and those below are promoted. (As an example; Seres Road had a relatively high position for a number of years and, indeed, sections were completed. However, the development of Seres Drive and Seres Court meant that the section across that frontage would suffer greater vehicle movements during the development and additional service connections into the carriageway. This section was deferred until completion of the development last year. This had the added benefit that the developer contributed to the overall cost of the scheme as compensation for accommodated works). All of the above means hat it is impossible to envision a possible programme more than 2/3 years ahead. None of these roads are currently expected to achieve a priority within that time frame. ....the only long-term indicator is the number of schemes (a single road may be broken down into a number of schemes) normally included within each year’s budget allocation. For the last few years, the number of carriageway resurfacing schemes within the Revenue element of the budget has held steady at around 12-13 schemes per annum. (Additional schemes have been carried out within the Capital element of the budget, but this is earmarked for classified roads). This year the Revenue budget has been given an additional allocation which is expected to accommodate an additional 17+ residential carriageway resurfacing schemes. If funding levels reduce back to pre-2017/18 levels; none of these roads are likely to be included in the coming 10+ years. If funding levels are retained at this year’s enhanced level; there is a possibility that Viaduct Road may be considered within that period. ....cannot be more positive or precise but with annual funding, generally, at/below standstill position and a backlog of some £26M of carriageway repairs, it is increasingly difficult to confidently say which roads will be the immediate priority going forward. Environment Department - Environmental Services and Roads - April 2017 |
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Re: Current State of the Roads in East Renfrewshire 7 years, 10 months ago #2
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Sorry I have only just come across your topic and your question.
If you will permit me, I will address your question of the roads in broad brush terms rather than on a road by road basis. Broadly speaking the roads in East Renfrewshire are shocking. My colleague in ward 5, Bev Brown recently wrote 'you need nerves and suspension of steel to drive around the streets.' ERC have to pay out money to compensate motorists and pedestrians who suffer damage to their vehicles or suffer personal injury. That is money being wasted as it does nothing to solve the problem. It's worth noting that there has been a flurry of activity by ERC roads over the last few months and being cynical, I conclude that the administration councillors are well aware that they have done nothing for roads so are now desperately throwing every penny they can at them but mainly confined to the main roads. They've just increased the roads budget by a miserly £1+M. Far too little far too late and they are only doing that for the same reason they suddenly scrapped their parking charge proposals and that was because they belatedly realised the 4th. May election was looming. Once the inconvenience of the election has passed I fully expect parking charges to be back on their agenda if they get re-elected and the roads budget not to be increased in the next budget. They love to have the excuse of the 'cuts'. In truth they squander far more than the value of the cuts because they are devoid of commercial reality and it’s always easier to make mistakes when it’s not your own money your spending. Briefing Notes in issue 120 last week alluded to how Jim Fletcher, the Council Leader, spent a meeting with Giffnock CC telling them there was nothing he could do against the big bad wolf of ERC to get them £10k for a feasibility study. However he suddenly at the end of the meeting pledged to have money made available, when the thorny subject of the election and more importantly his own chances of re-election came up. Read the report, item 2, for yourself! www.facebook.com/BriefingNotes/posts/1326116590804498 I wrote yesterday on my Facebook page, "If ERC cut their wasteful spending, removed inefficiencies and avoided all the foreseeable mistakes they make every single year, we would have an extra 5% to 10% of the budget to spend without any need for outrageous Council tax rises. In real money terms 5% to 10% of the budget delivers an extra £11M to £22 million every year." Whilst I was addressing the subject of finding extra money for social care for the elderly, the sum is so large it would be shared across all the priority issues and roads/pavements is definitely one. Here is a link to the article. www.facebook.com/ercchange/posts/1306253906137476:0 Now ERC have earmarked a mind blowing £19.3 million to build a link road from Barrhead to Jct 5 of the M77 at Maidenhill. Frankly that is a totally ludicrous proposal and a complete waste of money as most people want to access the M77 from Barrhead heading north to Glasgow without going for miles southwards out of their way. Currently they join the M77 at Jct 2 at Darnley. Not only is this road heading in the wrong direction but it is not capable of carrying HGV traffic. The money is coming from their £44 million City Deal fund but most of the proposals fail to meet the Government's criteria which is that they must deliver an economic benefit. This clearly does not. The City Deal across Greater Glasgow is worth £1.13 Billion yet they claim it could deliver a mere 700 jobs!!! That's an astonish subsidy PER JOB of £1,614,285. Given that many of these will be at the lower end of the pay scale, let's take an average salary of £15k/annum. Ignore inflation for simplicity and start the job aged 20 and retire 50 years later at 70 and you would have received GROSS before tax and NI only £750,000 in total. This is the crazy, incompetent way our administration Cllrs. think and the money they spend, correction waste, comes out of YOUR pocket. WHY DO THEY HAVE THE NERVE TO ASK TO BE RE-ELECTED WHEN THEY ARE CLUELESS AND USELESS? Instead I would use half of the £19.3 million of the link road money to build affordable steel and concrete two or three story carparks on the existing carparks at Giffnock, Clarkson, Whitecraigs and Patterton Railway stations. The current administration councillors will tell you this cannot be done because some of these carparks are owned fully or partly by SPT. I ask you to consider this: why would SPT be unwilling to set down and negotiate to deliver these bearing in mind that it would increase their passenger numbers and their revenues? That is where the current Cllrs. lack of commercial judgement, experience and vision is clearly displayed. The additional car parking would deliver economic benefits to the shopping centres of Giffnock and Clarkson, alleviate the parking congestion in those areas and in conjunction with Whitecraigs and Patterton car parks being upgraded, would alleviate some of the congestion on our road networks at peak commuter times. Incidentally Transport Scotland have agreed to allow Jct 4 at Newton Mearns to be upgraded to a 4 way diamond junction and they must be pressed to address the bottleneck where the M74/M8 both join the M77. We had a similar problem at Jct3 Silverburn and with the help of Jackson Carlaw, I and Newton Mearns CC eventually had the M77 exit into Silverburn re-marked to create two lanes in place of the single lane thereby simply and cheaply solving a major problem especially around the xmas shopping peak traffic. There is another issue which I consider to be a major failing with our roads. All too often on those rare occasions when our roads are newly resurfaced, it is only a matter of weeks before one of the public utilities comes along and digs the road back up. Once the surface has been sectioned it is very difficult to prevent it deteriorating and the reason why is simple. ERC roads fails to supervise the reinstatement works so where the public utilities subcontractor does a cheap and cheerful job by using inadequate materials and fails to compact the infill material properly, the patch only lasts 12 to 15 months and then starts to break up, which explains the cause of the condition of so many of our roads. ERC roads when doing planned as opposed to emergency repairs to roads could work better with the utilities making clear they would be reluctant to grant road closure permits on these newly repaired road surfaces. I see no reason why they cannot charge for the time required by staff members to properly supervise the reinstatement of these roads. By ensuring they are reinstated with quality materials to the highest standards, the repairs would last far longer and not resemble a recently bombed Middle Eastern road. If I can also comment on the roads department. Over many years I struggle to recall any objections they have ever made to planning applications and they have allowed through some atrocious road designs. Greenlaw retail park is a case in point. The internal road layout is dire and could have been greatly improved at no additional construction cost beyond the white paint to make it a one way system with a roundabout at the top. The outcome is the internal roads have never been adopted by ERC and we had to wait for years for a pedestrian crossing to enable, in particular, wheelchair users to cross from the main side of the retail park to Waitrose and visa versa. The entrance to the park at the roundabout is shocking and they don't seem to understand that driver’s heads cannot swivel round by 180°. They've just installed a pelican crossing between Aldi and the McCarthy and Stone development. The crossing has zigzags on it exactly at the point where there is a very short distance to get into the correct lane where the road goes from 2 to 3 lanes. The offset roundabouts on Stewarton Road, if we get a heavy snow covering, are dangerous for drivers, because they cannot predict the route of the carriageway. ERC roads failed to object to the application for the new access road at Maidenhill from the GSO, even though both the 2011 local plan and the 2015 Local development plan specifically prohibit any additional connections. One of the measures I've pushed for over a number of years has been far greater off street parking in new housing developments. Developers love to build four and five bedroom villas. The likelihood is that the purchaser of a five bedroom villa may have two or three children. When the children are old enough to drive you can end up with the husband, wife and 2 or 3 children each owning a car but with parking provision for only one or two cars off road. That is simply not acceptable in my view. Remember this takes no account of visitor parking so I propose a formula where each house must have one parking space per bedroom + one space. So in summary money could be found to repair our roads, it would take several years to get round them all but it could be done. Once repaired we must take far stronger measures to ensure that any subsequent repairs by third parties are reinstated to the highest possible standards. Lastly the roads department must greatly up their game and design better, safer road layouts in the first place. I’m also conscious of the roads approaching gridlock at peak times at our schools and in particular the Roads dept. failure to implement the simple solution available to deal with parents who park dangerously on Hunter Rd. whilst dropping children off at Mearns Primary. Those issues are for another day. |
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Re: Current State of the Roads in East Renfrewshire 7 years, 10 months ago #3
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Been trying to get local street potholes repaired for last 2 years. In the last few weeks some potholes patched. Is there an Election coming up?
Unfortunately, patches starting to break up already. In the course of trying to get potholes fixed, and get a timescale for actual repairs/resurfacing, have got some other info if anyone interested. East Renfrewshire Council Roads and Transportation Service PROPOSED CARRIAGEWAY RESURFACING 2017/18 Carriageway RCU Stewart Street (Carlibar Road to Crossmill Avenue),Barrhead £50,000 Rockmount Avenue, (Top section above Sherwood Drive) £75,000 Wellfield Avenue, Thornliebank £50,000 Dunbeath Avenue, Newton Mearns £45,000 Killoch Drive, Barrhead £40,000 Humbie Road, Eaglesham Rural (part only) £100,000 Polbae Crescent £55,000 Barrland Drive, Giffnock £50,000 Aurs Road, Barrhead High School, Barrhead (part only) £25,000 Accacia Drive, Barrhead £40,000 Sundale Avenue, Clarkston £67,500 C9 Eaglesham Road,(Newton Grove to Paidmyre Crescent), Newton Mearns £85,000 Castleton Drive, (Castlehill Drive to Castlemount Avenue) Newton Mearns, £90,000 Divernia Way, Barrhead (part only) £70,000 Kilpatrick Gardens (Cathkin Drive to Quarrybrae Avenue), Clarkston £65,000 Laggan Road, Newton Mearns £60,000 Balmeg Avenue, Williamwood £40,000 Low Broadlie Road/ Gleniffer View (part only) Neilston £50,000 Easterton Avenue, Busby £67,500 Moorhill Crescent, Newton Mearns £55,000 Park Road, Giffnock £50,000 Ormonde Drive, (Parklands Road to Ormonde Crescent), Netherlee £45,000 Stamperland Hill, Stamperland, (Randolph Drive to Netthervale Aveune) £30,000 Loanfoot Avenue/Craig Road, Neilston £70,000 Ashfield Road, Clarkston £20,000 £1,395,000 Carriageway Private Contractor (Capital) A736 Lochlibo Road (Part Only) Neilston £232,000 A77 Fenwick Road, (Part only),Giffnock £95,000 B767 Clarkston Road, (Part Only), Clarkston £160,000 A77 Ayr Road, (Part Only), Newton Mearns £177,000 B767 Eaglesham Road, (Part Only), Waterfoot £140,000 £804,000 Carriageway Private Contractor (Revenue) C1 Mearns Road, (Broom Road to Falkland Avenue), Newton Mearns £55,000 Roebank Drive, Barrhead £55,000 Berryhill Drive, Giffnock £75,000 Windlaw Gardens/Ormonde Avenue(Windlaw Park Gardens to Deanwood Road) £45,000 £230,000 Possible £600,000 still to be allocated through Participatory Bugeting Exercise |
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Re: Current State of the Roads in East Renfrewshire 7 years, 10 months ago #4
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Re: Current State of the Roads in East Renfrewshire 7 years, 10 months ago #5
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I think you meant woodfarm , it's waters that has woodworm
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The following user(s) said Thank You: Ernhw Ltd
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Re: Current State of the Roads in East Renfrewshire 7 years, 10 months ago #6
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Hhs wrote:
I think you meant woodfarm , it's waters that has woodworm Thanks HHS. Damn predictictive text and I'm running on<3 hours sleep a night which ain't a great combo. I've corrected it. Zzzzzzzzzz |
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