Piers Coutts, Liberal Democrat county councillor for Ely South, and a member of Cambridgeshire County Council’s Highways & Transport Committee, writes for the Ely Standard.
In February this year, the Liberal Democrat-led joint administration running Cambridgeshire County Council (CCC) voted to invest £43 million in Cambridgeshire’s roads in the next two years—the biggest investment in more than a decade.
The money will be spent to repair and prevent potholes, improve drainage, and carry out preventative work.
This includes £5 million specifically to deal with the worst of our ‘soil affected roads’. The county council has identified 156 such roads in Cambridgeshire totalling more than 1,600 kilometres in length.
The peat base of these roads, many of them in Little Downham, Pymoor, and other villages around Ely, expands in wet weather, and contracts as it dries out.
This movement is increasing as our weather becomes more extreme, putting huge strain on the road surface and causing the serious craters and splits we are all too familiar with.
The roads are deteriorating much more quickly than they used to, with previous repairs lasting only five years at most, and more innovative solutions are needed. Neighbouring councils such as Norfolk, Suffolk and Lincolnshire face similar problems.
Several weeks ago work started on the A1101 Bates’s Drove between Littleport and Welney.
This involves ‘recycling’ 7,500 square metres of road by digging out 5,300 tonnes of material from the existing road and using it to form new road layers.
Stabilisation grids are being installed to manage movement caused by the underlying peat and prolong the life of the road.
No imported aggregate is needed, and very little is taken off site, keeping carbon emissions to a minimum.
In the coming 12 months, another nine locations will also be treated, including stretches of Hill Row Causeway in Haddenham, Twenty Pence Road in Wilburton, and the road from Earith to Willingham.
In the longer term, however, the county council will need around £300 million to fully solve these problem roads.
That is money the council simply does not have, which is why it has been in discussion with the Department for Transport about the need for national investment—and why we need support from Cambridgeshire’s MPs and from Government to tackle the issue properly.
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