Summer road resurfacing plans across the county

Covering a massive 251 sites, the summer resurfacing scheme by Lincolnshire County Council highways will swallow up 25,000 tonnes of material and hundreds of work hours to improve 177 miles of roads. That’s as far as going from Lincoln to Cardiff.

The £5.5million scheme has just got underway and is planned to wrap up in the first half of August, weather permitting.

This type of roads dressing scheme is quick, effective - and because 251 Lincolnshire roads are getting it, there’s a high chance it will be happening pretty close to you.

Surface dressing is a cost-effective and pre-emptive way to improve the condition of roads. It’s also quick to do and will put another decade on a road’s life.

Small stone chips are put down on the road and compress into a sticky bitumen underlayer.

Put simply, what using these stones and tar-like substance does do is make struggling roads better to drive on. It makes the road more level and, once the stones are bedded in, is virtually identical to other road surface types.

And by putting surface dressing down, road condition isn’t just improved, it’s made better for longer. Think of it like putting fence paint on a fence – do it early and the fence lasts longer, it’s the same with this technique and roads.

And there’s recycling of materials involved too. Around 9,000 tonnes of stone chips will be put back into the summer scheme to keep costs down, by sweeping up loose material that comes from last season’s works.

Coun Michael Cheyne, executive member for Highways at LCC said: “This massive surfacing scheme is a very practical way of getting more life out of a road for less cost when compared to having to rip a road apart and then rebuild it, and it costs around a tenth of what the more conventional methods do.

“It’s less disruptive for road users too. We don’t always need a short-term road closure to get the work done and crews can lay around 50,000 square metres of new surface a day which is the roughly the same as 75 tennis courts.”

The work includes:

· Road Studs moved prior to the works

· Ironwork will be masked including gullies, manhole covers etc

· Surface Dressing is laid, including a layer of bitumen followed by one or two layers of aggregate which is then compacted down to be level and pushed into place

· Sweeping the begins between 24-48 hours later with a second sweep 7-10 days after that to remove the loose chips. Later in the year – after 13 weeks - a further sweep will happen, followed by a winter sweep

· Road markings and road studs will be reinstalled within 28 days of completion

New for this year is a live update about where the crews are working in Lincolnshire.

To find out where the surface dressing is being put down, just scan the QR code and you’ll be taken directly to a live digital map that has the very latest location information displayed. Or go to: www.lincolnshire.gov.uk/roadworks.