A crisis waiting to happen

摘要

When the Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA) launched the Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance (ALARM) Survey 2006 in March, it marked the second decade of close monitoring of the maintenance funding and state of England's and Wales's roads. The report makes depressing reading as it maps out the growing gap between investment and rate of deterioration in local authority maintained roads. As traffic volumes increase, and with businesses and communities relying on local authority roads as never before, the need for sustained investment in road maintenance becomes all the more compelling. Nevertheless, the ALARM 2006 survey shows that far from tackling the problems now, all the ingredients for a crisis in local authority road maintenance are staking up ahead of us.