Shropshire Council’s surface dressing programme for 2017 announced
Shropshire Council has announced its programme of roads that are to be surface dressed this summer.
Surface dressing (applying and rolling aggregate ‘chippings’ onto a bituminous binder) is a proven quick, efficient and cost-effective way of maintaining skid-resistance and waterproofing road surfaces and, as such, forms a major part of the council’s annual road maintenance programme.
The 2017 surface dressing season is due to start on 12 June, with operations ongoing until mid- to late-August.
In total 166 sites have been identified for treatment across the county on all types of road, from urban culs-de-sac to major ‘A’ and ‘B’ roads (click here to see a list). Due to the limited width of some roads, over 50% of the sites will unfortunately require a temporary road closure for the works to be carried out safely.
Other forms of temporary traffic management will include temporary signals with convoy working where appropriate and, for culs-de-sac, limited access will be available.
For the majority of ‘A’ and ‘B’ roads (23 separate sites at the moment) centre line studs/cats eyes also need to be removed and replaced under a temporary closure.
It’s envisaged that stud removal will take place overnight, followed by dressing and sweeping operations during the following couple of days, with the replacement of studs and road markings on some sites necessarily taking place up to ten days later. Again, this will be during one night’s (9pm to 6am) road closure.
In reality most of the closures will only be required for a few hours for the dressing operation, and we don’t envisage most being more than one day.
In order to deliver a ‘weather dependent’ programme (operations can’t be carried out during wet weather), and to take into account any unforeseen event which may stall or change the running order of the programme, the information we publish online won’t give a wholly accurate duration of the actual span of works at any one time.
In order to keep affected residents and road users informed of when and how long closures will be in place the usual procedures will be in place. Information letters will be delivered to affected residents and businesses and advance information signs will be on site at least ten days prior to due start date.
In addition, weekly updated programme information will be available on this webpage.
Further information
Shropshire Council spends around £9 million each year on resurfacing and surface dressing the county’s roads, ranging from unclassified rural roads to town centre roads to main ‘A’ roads. For more information, click here to see our blog/video.
