They didn't know about the cracked steel that they've just discovered - while carrying out other rectification work.
We expect politicians to foresee the future but in this case the engineers don't have X-ray vision !!
Beg to differ, there have been plenty of reports about the condition of the elevated section, There has always been a wait and see attitude because of the sheer mess it would cause to replace it, especially as now it is lined with office buildings they cannot tunnel under. in the new civil engineer online report dated 28 september 2007 Have known of problems since the 1990's.
Edited by OldRoverboy on 07/07/2012 at 21:33
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If i never had to venture within the M25 for the rest of my natural, then a happy chappy i would be, they're welcome to the hell hole.
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stay away, all of you provincials... where everyone waddles and £7 an hour a top wage.
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stay away, all of you provincials... where everyone waddles and £7 an hour a top wage.
Yeah- and you earn two or three times as much and spend it all on commuting and car parking.
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stay away, all of you provincials... where everyone waddles and £7 an hour a top wage.
Yeah- and you earn two or three times as much and spend it all on commuting and car parking.
Well, sticks and stones, the other advantage of living at the other end of the M4 is that Council tax is £900 ish for our 3 bed semi instead of £3000 in watford. Nice market town, no parking problems, ok no buses at night, but clean quiet place to live, no hassle parking at work, (free) can walk anyway, and people have the time to talk and say hello.
My original point was about the elevated section of the M4, but can anyone say what will happen when it has to be shut for 2 years while it is rebuilt. obviously the A4 and a lot of surrounding roads are going to be shut. God help you with your commuting then!
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some of us are fortunate and spend nothing on commuting or parking. If you are switched on, know the controlled hours, use a cycle when solo , you can avoid paying for parking altogether. Have not paid Congestion charge in over 3 years, no need to go there.
'Er indoors commutes 10 stops by tube into town daily - £131 a month. 5 bedroom house C Tax in middle suburbia £2300 pa. Not cheap but not £3k and not Watford . Plenty of well stocked 24 hour groceries within 5 mins walk, and a pharmacy open late 7 days a week .
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Motorprop, i admire your enthusiasm for city hell, you're very welcome to it too, you couldn't pay me enough to live in a city, too many city dwellers.
Doing rather nicely out here in the sticks though thankyou, never need to venture out of our abode or quiet garden for peace and quiet, and the salary, which is well above city based jobs in my industry does go an awful long way.
Enjoy the Zil lanes and the anti aircraft batteries on the roof won't you..:-)
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Can live with a fortnight's disruption. Not on my doorstep anyway . Got tickets for the Olympics too, cycle one day with mate and tube another with Mrs.
Property is shooting up , and we can eat out much better and cheaper than denizens of the sticks. Ploughman's , Worzel ?
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''Property is shooting up''
You'll be getting a visit from special branch talking like that at this time..:-)
A fair bit got burnt up in the recent riots as i recall too.
Whats this eating out lark, no good women down that way.
Hope Bobbin doesn't read that last tease.
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''Property is shooting up''
You'll be getting a visit from special branch talking like that at this time..:-)
A fair bit got burnt up in the recent riots as i recall too.
Whats this eating out lark, no good women down that way.
Hope Bobbin doesn't read that last tease.
Haha too late.
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Apart from the manure slinging. (plenty of it out here) Has anyone got the faintest idea about what will happen when the elevated section needs to be torn down to rebuild?
In my life, have lived in london twice, noisy, but best entertaiment/nightlife in the world, and actually very safe, New york, just noisy, abu dhabi, just noisy, 12 years in geneva noisy and damned expensive and now not very safe at all! and finally west wales, where if you can't understand what the locals are saying it's probably polish. (just joking now!)
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Seriously ORB i don't know, but i expect more major overpasses like this to become unsafe as time goes on, it'll be fun when they condemn the elevated section of the M6 as will no doubt happen in due course.
Some 25 or more years ago when the experts were pushing for increased truck weights, to comply with the EU masterstate demands, to go up from 32t max to 38t at the time, they assured us that with more axles the heavier lorries would be kinder to the roads, the way they went on about it you'd think a 5 axle truck just gave the road a gentle massage and a kiss goodnight.
Well, we're up to 44tons on 6 axles, and in most cases those axles are in 2 groups of 3 and only rare trailers have a steering axle...the three trailer axles are usually 8 ton max each so in practice a properly loaded 44 tonner will drag round three axle trailer combinations at around 23tons and those three axles only want to go in a straight line.
You only have to turn a truck hard and watch the rubber left on the road t see what forces are being exterted, look at roundabouts near industrial areas to see the battering the road endures.
Goodness knows how the current quite old overpasses have coped with the relentless battering of such weights day in day out for all these years.
Us old truck drivers never wanted the weights increased by the way, 32 tons was plenty, in most cases allowing a payload of 21/22 tons, now we are at 44 tons gross and the payload is around 28/29 tons., hardly worth it IMO.
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I'm not a civil engineer but I've seen photographs of damaged or degraded concrete beams as used in these structures.
Whilst I fully accept the points made above concerning loading, the images I see look as though the damage is due more to structural deterioration than to overloading. It's inconceivable that structural safety margins would be appreciably eroded by incresing axle weights.
Have they been using ordinary road salt on these structures in the Winter time?
659.
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Us old truck drivers never wanted the weights increased by the way, 32 tons was plenty, in most cases allowing a payload of 21/22 tons, now we are at 44 tons gross and the payload is around 28/29 tons., hardly worth it IMO.
Well, truck drivers would say that, wouldn't they! Less weight=more trucks=more demand for drivers.
44 tonnes is nothing. The tractor units have 500+hp these days can easily pull 60+ tonnes. The Aussies routinely pull over 100 tonnes, and, unlike European mincers, no messing around with synchromesh; they still drive properly-as do the Americans. :)
Since the tractor unit+ trailor weighs in at around 15 tonnes, upping the gross weight leads to a useful increase in payload with a corrosponding decrease in fleet fuel consumption and traffic congestion.
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''44 tonnes is nothing''
It is when the roads were built for 32 tons maximum and a volume of movements to suit the natural population.
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Property is shooting up
Now you mention it, so is petrol, and food! What an awesome country!
Lent my property rope ladder to a banker and it came back with the bottom rungs missing, how strange.
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