Merton Council carry out road repairs at night
Shhhhhhh….Merton Council is keeping the noise down so much when making road repairs that they have even started carrying out repairs at night.
Merton Council is the first London Borough to use the Rhinopatch™ Sustainable Maintenance System for night work. Rhinopatch™ is an asphalt and macadam recycling system and is used to carry out quiet, speedy, efficient and ‘sustainable’ repairs on hazardous potholes, cracks and deformations in carriageways and pavements. The repairs last longer than with traditional repair methods and the system recycles all existing road-surfacing materials, which makes it sustainable and environmentally friendly.
The Council have extended their use of the system to night working because unlike the traditional jackhammer it makes hardly any noise. This in turn means that it avoids the traffic congestion and jams normally associated with roadworks. So far Merton has carried out night work on a number of bus routes in order to reduce the delays suffered by bus passengers during the day, which is in line with the Mayor of London’s transport strategy to improve bus journeys and reduce delays to buses caused by roadworks.
Merton was the first London borough to use the Rhinopatch™ system on a continuous basis and have now been successfully using it for over a year. In this time the Council have used the system to:
Repair over 5000 square metres of carriageways and footways
Save approximately 850 tonnes of new replacement materials, which would have been used with conventional repair methods
Reduce quarrying and landfill
Assist the Borough in meeting its recycling targets.
Abide by the waste reduction and sustainability policies under ‘Best Value and Local Agenda 21 guidelines.
Merton Council’s Cabinet Member for Transport and Planning, Councillor Russell Makin, said: “We are delighted to be leading the way by being the first London Borough to extend the use of the Rhinopatch™ system to night work. By carrying out repairs at night we have been able to start to avoid the problems of daytime road closures and traffic congestion, which cause disruption for residents and visitors to the borough.”
Following some recent night work Mrs M Russell, resident of Manor Road, said, “All I can say is that I didn’t even know the repair work had been done until I went out to go to the doctors and saw it on the road. I was really surprised as I didn’t hear a thing.”
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