The Asphalt Industry Alliance published their 24th Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance (ALARM) survey today and surprise, surprise, we are still not getting on top of our road maintenance programs across the country. While investment budgets are increasing, the estimated time required to get today's roads back to full working order is still 10 years.
Paving the streets with gold?
Previously the crisis has been blamed on a lack of funding and it's clear the funding boost has helped reduce the rate of decline. However, in November 2018, Re-flow reached out across the Highways sector to gauge opinion from those working on UK highways to find out what issues they believed were holding the UK back from getting in front of our 'Roads Crisis'.
Other issues agreed by UK highways stakeholders that could be addressed to improve our management and delivery of highways infrastructure repairs and maintenance included:
- 62% REDUCED BUREAUCRACY
- 57% IMPROVED COMMUNICATION
- 48% INCREASED CAPACITY
- 38% IMPROVED PROJECT MANAGEMENT
- 29% A MORE SKILLED WORKFORCE
- 14% IMPROVED PLANT EQUIPMENT
While the ALARM survey is a valuable piece of research to highlight the amount of work we need to do to get the roads up to scratch in the UK, funding is clearly only part of the story... Read the full Re-flow Highways Stakeholder Survey here