M5 Roadworks at Oldbury

Apparently due to the hot weather the M5 roadworks is now going to take 6 months longer! So that’s 2 years in all.
Question to those who know about these things?
Would it not have been more efficient to just close the dammed thing, divert the traffic and completely demolish and build a nice new modern road instead.

Option 1) As above lots of crawling traffic in that area, for 6-9 months but a road that would last 40 years.

Option2) As chosen, two years of slow traffic and a patched up road that will in all likelihood need another overall in less than 5 years.

It seems to me that these kind of maintenance works only ever cause disruption in the UK. I often read articles of those who have visited Europe and its been a journey without any roadwork incident, until they arrive back in the UK that is. In fact when I recently visited Paris it was a trouble free motorway run from Paris to Calais. As soon as I hit the UK from the ferry I was caught in a huge queue on the M20 followed by 40mph speed restrictions on the M25, took me flippin hours to get home. Motorway driving today is an absolute pain and it rarely gets any different in all the years I've driven on em.

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Originally Posted by wbaliquidator

Apparently due to the hot weather the M5 roadworks is now going to take 6 months longer! So that’s 2 years in all.
Question to those who know about these things?
Would it not have been more efficient to just close the dammed thing, divert the traffic and completely demolish and build a nice new modern road instead.

Option 1) As above lots of crawling traffic in that area, for 6-9 months but a road that would last 40 years.

Option2) As chosen, two years of slow traffic and a patched up road that will in all likelihood need another overall in less than 5 years.

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Let’s all move to Genoa where they don’t give a fk about maintenance shall we?

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Originally Posted by phild

It seems to me that these kind of maintenance works only ever cause disruption in the UK. I often read articles of those who have visited Europe and its been a journey without any roadwork incident, until they arrive back in the UK that is. In fact when I recently visited Paris it was a trouble free motorway run from Paris to Calais. As soon as I hit the UK from the ferry I was caught in a huge queue on the M20 followed by 40mph speed restrictions on the M25, took me flippin hours to get home. Motorway driving today is an absolute pain and it rarely gets any different in all the years I've driven on em.

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Whether it's transport, education, police or health I do get annoyed by this constant knocking of everything British

On a midweek day in April I drove to from Luxemburg to Munich a journey my SatNav told me should take 6 hours on the famed German Autobahns. It took me nearly 10. The roads were congested, roadworks everywhere, service stations awful.

The French Autoroutes are lovely but as it costs best part of 100 euros to get from Calais to the Med they should be. I spent 16 hours one Saurday in July on them to do 400 miles. My advice never travel on them during les grandes vacances. Heard the story of the billions spent on French trains that were too big for the majority of their platforms?

I'd rather they take the extra 6 months and get it right than we end up with an Italian Job.

My point is that we should have scrapped it and built a new one. Too many short term fixes. Lets face it the 60’s was not a good era for construction was it. It’s not fit for purpose with the amount of traffic on our roads.
The Italian engineers had suggested that they should also demolish the Genoa bridge and build a new one as the ongoing maintenance costs were scandalous.

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Originally Posted by phild

It seems to me that these kind of maintenance works only ever cause disruption in the UK. I often read articles of those who have visited Europe and its been a journey without any roadwork incident, until they arrive back in the UK that is.

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Having formerly lived in Germany for four years I can assure you that Europe has it's share of disruption due to motorway maintenance.

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Originally Posted by wbaliquidator

My point is that we should have scrapped it and built a new one. Too many short term fixes. Lets face it the 60’s was not a good era for construction was it. It’s not fit for purpose with the amount of traffic on our roads.
The Italian engineers had suggested that they should also demolish the Genoa bridge and build a new one as the ongoing maintenance costs were scandalous.

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Don't think anyone is arguing the build a new one or fix the existing certainly not me as I am in no way qualified to. Are you? What is palbably untrue is to state it is a problem unique to the UK.