Agenda item

Officers will be at the meeting to discuss Highways and Transportation issues, including:-

a)           Road Re-surfacing – Leicester City Council’s general policy, including short-term pothole repairs and longer-term resurfacing works;

b)           Traffic Calming in Nursery Road;

c)            Accidents at the junction of The Parkway and Havencrest Drive; and

d)           Relocating the unused bus shelter in Bowhill Grove

a)     Road Re-Surfacing

Alan Adcock, (Head of Highway Maintenance with Leicester City Council), gave a presentation on Highway Maintenance, a copy of which is attached at the end of these minutes for information.

During the presentation, Alan Adcock drew particular attention to the following:-

·            Priorities for the Council were changing, moving away from a focus on main roads to a focus on local (residential) routes;

·            The roads in the City were valued at approximately £1.2 billion, making them the City Council’s largest asset and largest liability;

·            The City Council had a statutory obligation to maintain the roads in a safe condition;

·            Changes in the Local Transport Plan meant that it now was more focussed on sustainability, air quality and cycle routes;

·            Government accounting procedures required the Council to show that it was spending enough to maintain the asset;

·            Due to the current financial situation, the Council only had enough funds to implement the Transport Asset Management Plan (TAMP) objectives of optimising the safety of the network and focussing on the user.  This meant it was unable to fulfil the TAMP objectives of optimising network serviceability and sustainability;

·            The Council had received £200,000 Winter Damage Emergency Funding from the Department for Transport, but this was not enough to make much difference to the Council’s budgets;

·            Climate change meant that the country was experiencing more extreme weather events and that these would get more frequent, (for example, the amount of rainfall and high temperatures, which could damage road surfaces);

·            Although an additional £1 million had been agreed for the highway maintenance programme, other highway schemes had been lost;

·            The Thurncourt Ward currently did not have any urgent highway maintenance schemes outstanding;

·            Fewer complaints were received about concrete roads than other types of roads, as they did not get potholes, although they could collapse.  The main cause of problems for most road surfaces was water getting under the surface and then freezing and thawing, but water did not usually get in to concrete roads;

·            If problems were encountered with concrete roads, the short-term solution was to fill them as quickly as possible.  The long-term solution was to resurface them;

·            Exposed granite setts usually could be repaired by patching, as they often were only approximately 20 millimetres below the surface;

·            The City Council had not run out of grit during the exceptional weather during the winter of 2009/10, although supplies had been low.  In addition:

·              the City Council worked very closely with the County Council on various matters, including the winter gritting of roads, but as much as possible was done in-house.

During discussion on the presentation, Alan Adcock gave the following replies to questions:-

·            in recent years the Council had not had sufficient resources to be able to seal joints in concrete roads to prevent water getting in and weed growth;

·            statutory undertakers who could need to dig up roads were advised when the Council was doing works to roads, so that they could co-ordinate any work needed, and were not allowed to disturb a resurfaced road for 12 months after resurfacing.  Quarterly meetings were held with statutory undertakers to try and facilitate this, but it was recognised that there would be occasions when emergency work needed doing;

·            all highways were dealt with in the same way, irrespective of whether they were in private or Council housing areas;

·            the possibility of obtaining funding for remedial work from the European Union had been investigated, but this funding tended to be for large capital programmes;

·            anyone requesting that a dropped kerb be created should contact Alan Adcock,  (Head of Highway Maintenance with Leicester City Council); and

·            the drainage problems in the grassed area in Croyland Green would be investigated and consideration given to whether the access area could be enlarged, so that vehicles did not have to drive over the grassed area.

b)    Traffic Calming in Nursery Road

Graham Seaton, (Transport Development Officer with Leicester City Council), reminded the meeting that concern previously had been expressed over the possibility that bolts could break on the traffic calming road humps in Nursery Road. 

Officers had contacted a number of other authorities who had considerable experience of using this type of road hump.  It had been found that there were no reported problems for the other authorities contacted.

c)     Accidents at the Junction of The Parkway and Havencrest Drive

Graham Seaton, (Transport Development Officer with Leicester City Council), confirmed that a treatable problem at the junction of The Parkway and Havencrest Drive had been identified, as there had been 3 personal injury accidents reported there over the last 5 years.  As a remedial measure, it was recommended that give-way signs and markings should be installed, in conjunction with double yellow lines round the corner.  It was proposed that this would be included in a bid for funding from LTP3.  The outcome of this would not be known until summer 2011.

The Ward Councillors requested that the Community Meeting be kept informed of progress with this bid and suggested that, if the bid was unsuccessful, consideration could be given to using unallocated Community Meeting budgets for this purpose.

d)    Bus Shelter in Bowhill Grove

The meeting noted that the Bowhill Grove bus stop was being level accessed during the coming week and the shelter should go in very shortly after that.  Dates for this would be known during the week beginning 11 October 2010.