Sunday 21 February 2016

Essentially Cosmetic

According to a signboard beside the road the substantial amount of disruption created over 200 metres here on a potentially hazardous bend on the A625 going into the city is 'Essential Highways Work'. Delays here have certainly caused many HGVs to change their normal route towards the city.



I can see the positive side of that, bringing as it does more quiet than usual early in the morning, but doubtless others living where the HGVs have diverted to will feel differently.

But essential? Well I suppose we do live in an age when more people feel it's essential to have cosmetic surgery and even expect to get it on the NHS. For some of us oldies that seems strange. But the work that Amey is doing on the bend is surely cosmetic, not essential.

What they are actually doing is repairing a dry stone wall that has remained in a semi ruined condition for several decades if not longer. And in order to do this they have declared the whole bend a worksite needing access by their 'site vehicles' and the  closing of one lane of the highway; the access they need is presumably an occasional visit bringing in replacement stone.

One wonders how much all this is costing. Nobody has been heard to complain that the repair of the wall was an urgent issue and no stock are being kept there. Some who like ruins prefer it unrepaired and people are more concerned with the ugliness that SRWT brings to Blacka with its insensitive operations.

The story of why this is happening goes back to this post from June last year.  Some of Amey's workmen applied weedkiller not just to the road verge, bad enough, but actually came inside the wall doing the same - thus inside Blacka for which SRWT are responsible. When Amey's management were informed what they had done they were crestfallen. What can we do to make up for our terrible mistake? Well, says SRWT, you could repair our boundary wall. Thus for weeks on end so far Amey's workers have been busy here. How much is it all costing, and are there associated delays in their other operations because staff are here rather than elsewhere?

But there's more yet. Part of the deal was that Amey would cut down some trees further up alongside the road! Street trees, ye gods!! Those very 'street trees' that SRWT and others have been lobbying the council to show mercy on. With bated breath .......

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