Highway Damage

Following the colder than normal weather we experienced in the UK this year, the inevitable damage to roads have occurred. To a large extent, I guess that is to be expected. My car was the unfortunate casualty of the hole in the picture above last month. That particular morning, I changed my tyre, arrived in to work around 30 mins late and booked the car into a nearby tyre service centre for repair, costing me around £50.
One of my work colleagues recommended that I report the incident to the highways authority and make a claim for the damage. This has been at the back of my mind for a few weeks, partly because I needed to photograph the offending hole.
I decided today to investigate the reporting procedure for this sort of road damage, finding more than a couple of press releases stating that there have been numerous claims for compensation of this sort. It all comes out of higher local taxes, so I thought, I'll only be adding to increased council tax in future, so why bother going through the hassle of making a claim. Despite this, I decided I'd attempt to report the road damage.

Conclusion:
I've seen little relative evidence of road repairs in the last month. Driving my route to work is particularly bad, having to pay a lot of undue attention to "slalom" driving whilst trying to avoid further punctures.

I was amazed to see the offending hole still un-repaired! (I only took the photo yesterday morning).

The online reporting page on the Kent County Council website asks for name, address, email, and phone contact number on an insecure webpage.
(i.e. giving out detailed, personal information to that level require a secure webpage starting "https://" the "s" indicating security, however their page is the basic "http://" I don't feel comfortable sending information this way. Who know who can hack that sort of information and end up with tons of addition spam in my email inbox, junk mail through the letterbox and unsolicited telephone calls!

The road to nowhere

Driving down to the band I play for in Deal involves traveling down one road that has been in the process of widening to a duel carriageway for well over a year. It appears it's still not finished despite cones keeping one lane either side for what seems to me precisely no reason whatsoever. The road works finished weeks ago. The purpose of this road widening is to cope with the traffic generated by my districts largest employer, Pfizer (of viagara fame).



Allow me to digress for a moment of explanation.

During the 1980's, I worked at Ramsgate Harbour as a shipping clerk. The port was pretty successful with a regular passenger/freight ferry service that ran to Dunkirk in France. Although Ramsgate is much smaller than Dover, it did provide a suitable and viable alternative. Sally Line ferries were pretty popular too. The one drawback of Port Ramsgate was the lack of a suitable access road to the ferry terminal.





18 metre articulated lorries used to rumble down through the town before making a U turn onto the old access road along Ramsgate Marina. The building of a new road and even at one point a possible rail freight link was discussed for years until the decision was finally made to cut a tunnel through the cliff avoiding the town centre. This tunnel and road was finally completed in 2000, however, by that time, Sally ferries had pulled out of Ramsgate. There is still a limited freight ferry service there but nothing like the amount of traffic the road built to carry.



So, returning to my introduction to this blog. The road leading to Pfizer is at some point going to open. Cue local news last week that revealed Pfizer are shutting down the production side of their operation with the loss of 400 of the 3000 employee's on the site. There are rumours that Pfizer may even pull out of Ramsgate. I get that feeling of dejavu. Another road built too late.



It's that time of year, The equinox..... enjoy