Highways chiefs have welcomed plans for a multi-billion pound investment in roads.
The government has committed the cash from savings due to the cancellation of Phase Two of HS2.
Of the £8.3billion announced, a total of £2.2billion is expected to come to the West and East Midlands region.
Although the final figure for Staffordshire has yet to be announced, the money is in addition to the £20million Staffordshire County Council says it has already invested in the repair and maintenance of highways over the past 12 months.
The latest funding will be used for maintaining, repairing and improving the local road network.
Staffordshire County Council’s cabinet member for commercial, Cllr Mark Deaville, said:
“As a county council, we are committed to fixing more of Staffordshire’s roads and have invested £30 million to deliver on this promise over the next two years.
“We have used this money to invest in groundbreaking AI technology to identify defects and innovative machinery like the JCB Pothole Pro to repair them. On average, we fill a pothole every eight minutes.
“Although we are still waiting for the finer details, this latest funding will certainly be more welcome news for Staffordshire motorists.
“It means we will be able to repair more roads and invest in more innovative technology to help our crews and make our improvements as efficient as possible.”
Cllr Mark Deaville, Staffordshire County Council
Not sure what “Artificial” intelligence is necessary here, just the intelligence – member of the public spots a pothole, reports it to the council, council fixes pothole.
The council will just waste the money just like they have in the past. When a pothole repair gang is working on a section of road, they should repair all surface damage in that area of the road. Time from pothole marking to repair is too long so often other potholes develop before repairs are done. These just get ignored by tepair team as not on job sheet. A complete waste of our taxes.
Mick, spot pothole,report to council,a white ring is drawn round it,6 months later it is still there but the white ring has worn out
It’s telling that the measure used by Cllr Mark Deaville is quantitative and not qualitative.
i.e. They talk about how fast they fill a pothole, and not how long the pothole and the surrounding x square metres of road last for without further failure.
Mick has it spot on as well, road classified as not so busy so repair not needed urgently, even if it’s 150mm deep, and getting deeper by the day. The County Council appears to think that if a pedestrian, runner or cyclist only has risk of serious injury less often, it can wait. One of my friends sustained a bad injury running when they could not see a pothole on a lesser used road due to puddles. Roads become a lottery trying to remember what is a harmless puddle, and what is a crater about to break your ankle and throw you into the path of a car for even worse outcomes.