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Motorists get bumpy ride on Gib's roads
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The roads are a mess. Worse than that, they are a dangerous, expensive mess. Potholes cause damage to vehicles and lead to accidents, not only for drivers of vehicles and cyclist but for the walking pedestrian who have to negotiate their passage through a lunar surface type pavement and accompanying obstacles, there is a clear threat to road safety because of lack of maintenance and in my view under-funding.
The Road license may have been abolished a few years ago, but the Government is still making a tidy sum on yearly fuel charges, this if the queues at petrol stations are anything to go by, particularly from drivers across the border. All this is extra finance that is racked in which could easily go towards improving road maintenance.
Clearly, sums don't add up - and it's shortsighted in the extreme for our roads to be left looking like a Tarmac cheese-grater. Poor roads aren't only unsafe but together with appalling traffic management they add to congestion and therefore pollution and emissions.
It's ironic that all this is happening after 5 or 6 years of real misery for drivers in Gibraltar because of seemingly endless road works and developments shooting up all over the place.
Astonishingly, Utility Companies every year dig up dozens upon dozens of trenches across roads, streets and in every conceivable spot, adding to the chronic state and condition of highways. Although when these companies have finished laying their cables and pipes or what ever they stuff inside these holes in the ground, they most often than not, leave the road surface in a much worse state than when they found it, when they should actually be charged with improving it.
It's not good enough to simply refill these holes which are sometimes as big as a small size crater. They should have to completely resurface a sizeable area over and around the area of work they have excavated.
We pay the Government to look after the roads we drive on, and to ensure they are not only safe but comfortable, too. Its not as if a member of the public can easily seek damages in the event of suffering an accident walking as a pedestrian or driving in a car as a direct result of the state of the road or pavement being in a bad and dangerous condition. It’s practically impossible to take Government to court or seek damages, mainly because of the absence of the appropriate legislation allowing these cases to proceed.
Obviously the Government is not as silly as some people think, and will not introduce this law until roads are in a fit state and in an ’Anti-Lawsuit Condition. A situation, that looking at the various road works going on in the never-ending upper Main Street area, Devils Tower Road-Cross of Sacrifice and the new Airport Road and others planned, and the length of time these road works are taking which may in fact out live our lifetime. There’s actually a better chance of arriving in Morocco by car in the proposed, still on the drawing board historic Tunnel, under the straights from Tarifa, than ever seeing all these local road works, improvements what have you ever being completed,
I have thought that our pot holed road network may be a unique way by the Ministry of Transport of saving money and a crude and perverse road safety initiative at the same time, as leaving these gaping holes in the roads will certainly force motorists to slow down and provide "original traffic-calming measures- but I really put it down to atrocious planning.
As a driver for over 40 years, I take heart from the fact that our Road Brains on the Rock only have 4 or 5 miles of road to mess up or hole up, and do not have to play with long motorways and other complicated intersections we see elsewhere- and that’s my idea of ending on a bright note!
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