MGB & GT Forum

I live in the UK and own a MGB GT Le but sadly I hardly ever drive it because of the many deep potholes we have around where I live. This is not just around here it's nationwide and to get the local council to pay for tyre damage/punctures etc is nearly impossible because they are broke and fight every claim. Their excuse is they don't have the cash to make repairs and only repair holes that might injure or kill someone.

I know owners of classic's don't pay road tax but I have another car which I do pay and that was damaged by a pothole. The councils blame electric cars, SUV's and the amount of traffic we have now but there must be a fairish way to charge motorists that's purely for road repairs and nothing else.

So what ideas have you guys got? I thought of an extra tax on petrol/diesel and do away with the road tax except for electric cars who would be charged road tax. So the more miles you do damaging the roads the tax will pay for the repairs.

Not an easy one but I'm interested in how you all feel.

I would say it's all the huge lorries that cause the damage, not so much cars. But if the haulage firms paid more road tax, it would eventually be passed on to consumers anyway. I would say potholes are here to stay for a long time.

A large truck causes as much road damage as 1,000 cars - check the research. So cars subsidise trucks. That's why Highway 407, a privately owned toll highway around Toronto, does not allow trucks. Their pavement should last 100 years. That's also why trucks have put railway freight out of business in North America. Freight railways have to pay their own way, truck roads are 90% supported by cars. Except of course the EVs, which pay nothing, and cause more road damage due to their greater weight. Good luck with trying to change any of that.

almost no potholes in kentucky!

I dated a huge Lorrie once. She did put a lot of stress on the roads.

Same here in Pennsylvania. I just pretend that I'm driving on an obstacle course!

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Motoring with the top down, laughing in the face of the wind!

Safety Fast (Just be sure your brakes are good!)

Now that you mention it Phil, I see very little potholes here in Kentucky. Except in many store parking lots!

I do the same as Sonny, just attempt to drive around them. Good MG handling makes that easier. The real problem is with my daily drive when it's raining. The potholes fill with water, and you can't see them. Around home, I get to know where the really bad ones are, and know where to avoid them.

I read in the newspaper years ago about the bad problem with potholes in Pennsylvania. I'm in Pittsburgh, in western PA, but the problem is the same where Sonny is in eastern PA. (By the way Sonny, I used to live in Phoenixville many years ago.) The Pennsylvania Dept. of Transportation (Penndot) blames the pothole problem on the freeze/thaw cycle during the winter, along with the use of road salt. However, you can go right across the boarder into Ohio, and the pothole problem is not so bad, and they have the same weather and also use road salt. According to the article, years ago Penndot required road builders to use a "reformulated" asphalt, which had a lowered amount of liquid bitumen in the mix. The reason was older asphalt was a solid mass, and when the road surface would wear over time, it would become very smooth and therefore slippery when wet. The reformulated mix had lower levels of liquid bitumen which would leave the mix slightly porous. Then when the surface wore down, it would still have some roughness, to provide better traction and therefore fewer accidents. The problem with that is now water and salt could penetrate the pores and allow the freeze/thaw cycle to eventually break up the asphalt. As I recall, several years ago Penndot once again reformulated the mix to make it more robust. That said, I also agree that the increasing numbers of heavy truck and automobile traffic does lead to faster roadway deterioration. The best solution for now is, as always, good defensive driving. Just my two cents worth!

Don

I see no easy solution for aging infrastructure for your country or mine.
You have a beautiful car and it must be frustrating not being able to enjoy it.

Steve,

The answer is where the rubber meets the road. A tax on all tires as the sole source for road maintenance costs would be as close to fair as you will find. The heavier the vehicle and the more tires it uses the greater the contribution. Couldn't be simpler, but the carbonphobes, who are convinced that combustion is the devil, are so deranged they can only focus on fuel. The tax code should be written to fund government functions as efficiently as possible with the least disruption to the economy. It should never be written for social engineering.

Silas

The heavy goods vehicle parc isn't as big as people think, there are less LGV's on the road now than there were years ago. But they are big so you notice them.
Trucks have lots of wheels because the regulations dicate how much axle weight they can have to spead the load: and the road tax is thousands not hundreds.

If you look carefully around the potholes most of them are caused by the utility companies continually digging up the roads and making a poor job of filling in the holes, and poor repair work generally.

The A54 near me (a major road) was rebuilt some years ago but the local council has allowed the drains to become blocked, the road floods and it has begun to break up.
The UK government have given councils billions to fix potholes but they have spent it on other things

Here on Long Island we have a NY State parkway system which is restricted to cars, no trucks allowed. Limited access and 2 or 3 lanes in each direction. It dates back to the mid 20th century. Originally concrete, most of it is now asphalt.
It is in constant need of repairs. It can be like driving on the moon between repairs. They constantly fill and refill the potholes and then repave the entire roadway in sections about every 10 years or so.

We live right off a short north/south part called Sunken Meadow Parkway which runs about 10 miles between the Long Island Expressway and Sunken Meadow State Park on Long Island Sound. It is still concrete. It's full of patches done with asphalt which fail within months of being done. It's at the bottom of the repair list because it is relatively lightly used compared to the east/west parkways which are major commuter routes. When we moved here 40 years ago there was a large pothole on the exit ramp by our house. It was right in the middle of the roadway which fortunately made it fairly easy to avoid. Well, that pothole is still there today. It's probably been filled a thousand times. Now it's surrounded by many more so avoiding the old one simply leads you to another.

I like the idea of the tire tax but agree that the powers that be can't see past fuel taxes.

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Dave Loechel
66/67 roadster


"How would you like a job where, every time you make a mistake, a big red light goes on and 18,000 people boo?" - Jacques Plante

"I always shot at the goalie and let my inaccuracy score for me." - Mike Bossy

Just because they tax tires, gas, or whatever, doesn't necessarily mean the funds will go there. As Tony said, it often goes to the general fund and gets allocated wherever the politicians want.
When the government took over the numbers racket from organized crime, the funds were promised for education. What they didn't say was the original amount for education funding was reduced by whatever the lottery $$ were. That meant extra for pork.

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I'd rather wear out than rust out.

"If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking." General George Smith Patton

In Massachusetts roads are fair there are some good roads that I enjoy, but avoid the real bad ones. Igot pulled over once for swearing out of the way. I told the policeman that I not ruining my car by driving over them. He smiled and said have a great day. They like our old cars.

So what do you do for fun with the MGB in Crewe?
Cars and Coffee or any meetups like that?