IN these times of financial strain on our councils, some short-term thinking is costing the general economy dearly. There’s a developing trend to totally close roads and do the repairs on a slow basis. The immediate apparent cost saving is not using extra hours (overtime) to effect repairs, but the unseen cost to the economy can be many times the saving the council achieves.
Take the example of the closure of the A801, Avon Gorge on the boundary of Falkirk and West Lothian councils’ areas. The A801 is a heavily used road between the M8 and M9. The road was said to require "emergency repairs". One council estimated the traffic at 10,000 per day including over 1500 HGVs. The eight-mile diversion through three small villages of Westfield, Avonbridge and Standburn, has created the need for patching gangs to be brought in several times to fix the damage caused by traffic the roads were not designed for. Special traffic control measures to facilitate two schools have been required along with temporary speed restriction signs and the dozens of diversion signs they rent for the job. The estimated cost to the economy of the 10,000 vehicles a day diverting an extra five miles, with the traffic control measures, is £30,000 per day. The closure has been extended now to 51 working days (72 real world days). That’s a cost to the economy of more than £2million. And that doesn’t count the repairs that will be required on the diversion that the two councils will have to pay for directly. Falkirk Council will save a few thousand pounds in overtime perhaps, but lose an unknown amount in unintended consequences. Meantime, the actual work done has occupied only a few actual days with the council citing shortage of materials. Work starts on those days they do anything at mid morning, and finishes early afternoon, presumably they have to clock off in the depot.
If a repair is genuinely urgent, then it should be repaired 24/7 to save money. Merely closing the road for months on end and allowing the rest of the economy to pick up the tab is false economy by our local governments. If this type of thinking prevails in other areas of council operations, then the distress caused by the lower level of funding is understandable but not acceptable. Perhaps it extends to all council activity?
The example of these two councils is not isolated to them. Across Scotland there are hundreds of road closures, most of them for a period of between 10 and 20 times the hourly duration of the actual work being done. In many cases the diversion route is incapable of taking the volume of traffic, and increasingly, one diversion runs into another causing further chaos. Extrapolating the cost of the case cited above for the whole country would be inaccurate, but it must be running into millions – every day. It’s time that some more serious financial thinking was applied to this situation.
Geoff Crowley,
3 Park View, Westfield, Bathgate.
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