Who's to blame for all these roadworks?
Number of roadworks double in a year
If you've been recently wondering what the actual flipping heck is happening with roadworks being absolutely everywhere and need someone to blame, I've a name for you. In the past two years, the amount of roadworks across the UK, not just Bristol, has increased by 110%. Sky News has obtained data that shows there were 425,524 miles of roadworks across the United Kingdom last year.
In 2023 there were 203,000 miles of lane closures. So a huge increase.
Who's responsible?
Usually it's the council and town planners we are quick to blame whilst wasting away at yet another temporary set of lights, but this increase in what feels like mindless digging has come from the top. It's a pledge that none other than a lot of people's least favourite Tory, Boris Johnson, made back in 2019 to roll out full fibre broadband to every corner of the country in his "levelling up" agender.
In shocking news that wont surprise anyone, the original deadline for operation Gigabit has come and gone. What will upset everyone who uses a road however is that the Tories were so far behind and our governments traffic department so lame that we're currently looking at a further 6 years worth of disruptions. The whole project is set to be delayed longer than the original estimated time for completion. Could they be anymore incompetent?
That's a rhetorical question.
More pain coming
The current government is hoping that over the next ten years, 100,000 public electric charging points will be created on our streets, which of course means ripping up the tarmac again. Regularly we see the same stretch of road being dug up over and over for new utilities, fixing old pipes and making corrections for errors. This then leads to more motorist misery and a higher likelihood of potholes being created.
Governments past and present have said they would clamp down on unnecessary roadworks, which doesn't seem to have happened. The labour Government said by this summer they would start doubling fine for companies taking too long but once again that deadline was missed and will be pushed back AN ENTITE YEAR! Why?
