BRITAIN'S ROADS CRUMBLING

According to a recent survey Britain’s roads are crumbling due to lack of funding and a 10 year backlog of repairs. Apparently local council highways engineers are currently only getting 32% of the budget they need for maintenance work, despite the increasing amount of traffic on our roads. On average, the roads are only being resurfaced every 56 years, with local councils being blamed for not providing enough funding. According to the RAC, poor road surfacing is one of the top causes of accidents for motorcyclists.

The survey comes hot on the heels of the news that Britain is to have it’s first US-style car-share lane built on a motorway, in an effort to tackle pollution and traffic congestion. The lane can only be used by cars carrying two or more passengers and will open in 2007, in Leeds, West Yorkshire. Critics of the scheme argue that in America, quite often the lanes are under-used. Also the time saved by using the lanes is lost by stopping to pick up passengers!