Damaged rims...

Fip said:

Has anyone lodged a successful claim for damaged rims due to road
conditions? Sure, the LBS only charges $19 for truing and replacing
spokes...but why should I pay? The condition of Sydney's roads is a
joke....

Give it a shot and let me know how it works out 🙂

hippy

Fip said:

Has anyone lodged a successful claim for damaged rims due to road
conditions? Sure, the LBS only charges $19 for truing and replacing
spokes...but why should I pay? The condition of Sydney's roads is a
joke....

Claim against who ?

Fip said:

Has anyone lodged a successful claim for damaged rims due to road
conditions? Sure, the LBS only charges $19 for truing and replacing
spokes...but why should I pay? The condition of Sydney's roads is a
joke....

you can claim (in Melb) to either local council or Vicroads if a surface hasnt been repaired after a certain time-period (cant remember duration...) if the offending surface has been previously reported to relevant body a minimum of 30 days to damage occurring

If you lodge your compaint thru the vicroads 'contact us' page they have to reply to your message by 7 days, given priority over written/physical complaints (30 days).

It sometimes helps having friends 'on the inside' 😄 otherwise they dont advertise this stuff to the general 'unwashed'

Fip said:

Has anyone lodged a successful claim for damaged rims due to road
conditions? Sure, the LBS only charges $19 for truing and replacing
spokes...but why should I pay? The condition of Sydney's roads is a
joke....

Are we living in America? Sure write to the local council, but I think
lodging a claim is going too far.

flyingdutch said:

you can claim (in Melb) to either local council or Vicroads if a
surface hasnt been repaired after a certain time-period (cant remember
duration...) if the offending surface has been previously reported to
relevant body a minimum of 30 days to damage occurring

If you lodge your compaint thru the vicroads 'contact us' page they
have to reply to your message by 7 days, given priority over
written/physical complaints (30 days).

It sometimes helps having friends 'on the inside' 😄 otherwise they
dont advertise this stuff to the general 'unwashed'

I'd love to see a 'minimum standard' introduced for road repairs. ie.
"new surface must not differ in height from old surface by >1cm".
Whoever repairs our roads obviously only thinks about cars.. frickin'
pot holes and [censored] everywhere! Arrr! Who do I contact to get laws
introduced about this? pollies? bike lobyists? road workers?

hippy

hippy said:

I'd love to see a 'minimum standard' introduced for road repairs. ie.
"new surface must not differ in height from old surface by >1cm".

I'd love to have such a standard set. But I can't hold my breath that long
:-)

Quoted message said:

Whoever repairs our roads obviously only thinks about cars.. frickin'
pot holes and [censored] everywhere! Arrr! Who do I contact to get laws
introduced about this? pollies? bike lobyists? road workers?

BV. Local MP. RACV are making a bit of scene about this in Royalauto
(including reasonable reference to cyclist requirements). Wonders do occur.

Cheers
Peter

hippy said:

flyingdutch said:

you can claim (in Melb) to either local council or Vicroads if a
surface hasnt been repaired after a certain time-period (cant remember
duration...) if the offending surface has been previously reported to
relevant body a minimum of 30 days to damage occurring

If you lodge your compaint thru the vicroads 'contact us' page they
have to reply to your message by 7 days, given priority over
written/physical complaints (30 days).

It sometimes helps having friends 'on the inside' 😄 otherwise they
dont advertise this stuff to the general 'unwashed'

I'd love to see a 'minimum standard' introduced for road repairs. ie.
"new surface must not differ in height from old surface by >1cm".
Whoever repairs our roads obviously only thinks about cars.. frickin'
pot holes and [censored] everywhere! Arrr! Who do I contact to get laws
introduced about this? pollies? bike lobyists? road workers?

hippy

You have to do it from "inside" the establishment.
Vote Hippy for Prime Minister, Yay!!

Marty

hippy said:

[snip]

I'd love to see a 'minimum standard' introduced for road repairs. ie.
"new surface must not differ in height from old surface by >1cm".
Whoever repairs our roads obviously only thinks about cars.. frickin'
pot holes and [censored] everywhere! Arrr! Who do I contact to get laws
introduced about this? pollies? bike lobyists? road workers?

hippy

That's a good idea for all roadworks, but I'd be satisfied with some standard that relates to the gap between the gutter and the asphalt. Those gaps are _nasty_.

Ritch

Marty said:

hippy said:

I'd love to see a 'minimum standard' introduced for road repairs. ie.
"new surface must not differ in height from old surface by >1cm".
Whoever repairs our roads obviously only thinks about cars.. frickin'
pot holes and [censored] everywhere! Arrr! Who do I contact to get laws
introduced about this? pollies? bike lobyists? road workers?

You have to do it from "inside" the establishment.
Vote Hippy for Prime Minister, Yay!!

Just the thing for my already over-inflated ego..

What electorate are you in Marty? You wanna own it? 🙂

hippy for PM

hippy said:

Marty said:

hippy said:

I'd love to see a 'minimum standard' introduced for road repairs. ie.
"new surface must not differ in height from old surface by >1cm".
Whoever repairs our roads obviously only thinks about cars.. frickin'
pot holes and [censored] everywhere! Arrr! Who do I contact to get laws
introduced about this? pollies? bike lobyists? road workers?

You have to do it from "inside" the establishment.
Vote Hippy for Prime Minister, Yay!!

Just the thing for my already over-inflated ego..

What electorate are you in Marty? You wanna own it? 🙂

hippy for PM

We'll have to make up some "Hippy for PM" errh... bumper stickers for
our bikes!

I'm in a fairly flat part of the country, I want some mountains built
here for mountain biking. That's a good use of taxpayers money isn't it?

Marty

Fip <[email hidden]> wrote in
news:[email hidden]:

Quoted message said:

Has anyone lodged a successful claim for damaged rims due to road
conditions? Sure, the LBS only charges $19 for truing and replacing
spokes...but why should I pay? The condition of Sydney's roads is a
joke....

If it is a counil then you may have a chance. If it is the RTA you don't
have a chance because they have specific legislative protection against
such claims. Remember you are always responsible to ride/drive according
to conditions. So if you hit a large pothole and trash your rim - that's
your fault.

Cheers
Brett

hippy <[email hidden]> wrote in
news:[email hidden]:

Quoted message said:

flyingdutch said:

you can claim (in Melb) to either local council or Vicroads if a
surface hasnt been repaired after a certain time-period (cant
remember duration...) if the offending surface has been previously
reported to relevant body a minimum of 30 days to damage occurring

If you lodge your compaint thru the vicroads 'contact us' page they
have to reply to your message by 7 days, given priority over
written/physical complaints (30 days).

It sometimes helps having friends 'on the inside' 😄 otherwise they
dont advertise this stuff to the general 'unwashed'

I'd love to see a 'minimum standard' introduced for road repairs. ie.
"new surface must not differ in height from old surface by >1cm".
Whoever repairs our roads obviously only thinks about cars.. frickin'
pot holes and [censored] everywhere! Arrr! Who do I contact to get laws
introduced about this? pollies? bike lobyists? road workers?

hippy

Warning Warning very long rant following

Some statistics.

There are 868,000 odd km of public road in Australia

About 1/3 of this is sealed (includes both bitumen and asphalt)
At $1,000/km/annum (quick grade) you need $579mill for the dirt roads
At $10,000/km/annum (reseal, multiply by 10 for asphalt) you need
$2.9billion for sealed roads.

The total road expenditure in Qld/NSW/Vic from all levels of government
is between $5billion and $8billion.

So if we managed to maintain the road to the standards you would like we
would have about $2.5billion to cover maintenance for all those lights,
bridges, guardrails etc in three states.

Some more numbers for you.

In Australia most sealed (granular) pavements are designed for a 20 year
service life prior to major works. (Some recent (last 5 years) major
projects adopted higher design lives of say 40 years). For this to work
you need to replace 5% of total pavement per year.

The state agencies (RTA, QDMR, Vicroads) who do most of the capital
(read new or total reconstruction works) replace about 1.5% of their
networks (which make up about 3 to 5% of the total network).

1.5% replaced = 65 year service life. There is a bit of a gap.

BTW latest estimates suggest that spending between $11 and $15
billion/year for 10 years would bring the existing roads up to the
current acceptable standard.

So the first problem is we don't have enough money.

Exercise 1.

Lets start with a pothole. It varies in depth between 100mm and 150mm
and is semi regular (round) in shape with a slight lip (they dish as
they expand) with a diameter of 200 to 300mm. It will usually be on the
outer wheelpath so you need to shut down a lane for a short distance to
get at. Now you need to square the hole, spray it with emulsion and fill
it with asphalt. I would like to see you judge just how much to put in
the hole since you need to leave it a little high (about 15%) for
compaction but of course not too much. You get one chance and you have
5 minutes from start to finish.

It isn't as easy as it looks by a long shot. Sometimes you get lucky.

Of course this will only work if there isn't some deep seated failure
that requires reconstruction that your council can't afford to fix. And
since it takes time to fix each one after they are reported it can take
a couple of weeks to fix all the new ones after a storm.

(Potholes form from the compression of an incompressible fluid in the
overall granular structure in the road generally radiating outwards from
a surface imperfection)

Exercise 2

After repeatedly fixing potholes you have determined that there is a
deep seated failure and pavement strengthening is needed. So now (after
getting about $1.5million in funding) you need to shut down the nice
road running at 50,000 vpd (assuming it is an urban area). Of course
this means night work. You need to use a road planner to remove the
asphalt/stabilised road base. This generates about 110 dB at 10 metres
so now all the residents are complaining about the mess that is being
made and the noise.

Believe it or not planning, designing, constructing and maintaining a
road network is actually harder than rocket science. Why? Because most
of the variables are unknown or out of your control. One of the biggest
variables is human behaviour.

This is made harder by the fact that we are trying to do it with 1/2 the
money we should have and 1/3 the staff. Most engineers tied up in
infrastructure (electrical, gas, water, sewerage, roads and rail) are
donating hours to their employers (work 50 hrs for 36 hrs pay) and have
extrordinary leave balances (currently at 18 weeks leave earned in 4
yrs, I've had two weeks off in that 4yrs which I spent helping out a
remote community with their gumby roads).

And of course if it all goes pear shaped (storms/cyclones etc) guess who
gets to go out and make sure that you remain comfortable and dry with
your heater and the knowledge that if you run out of anything then it
will be at Safeways/Coles just around the corner.

Be thankful for what you have and even more so for the thousands of
people you will never meet or even think about unless the power goes out
that make your current lifestyle possible.

(There are less engineers in this country than either lawyers or doctors
and you wonder why you have potholes?)

Rant over. Sorry that it is so long and thanks if you stayed with it.
Any spelling mistakes are entirely mine since I refuse to spell check in
Word.

Brett

Brett said:

snip

(There are less engineers in this country than either lawyers or doctors
and you wonder why you have potholes?)

Rant over. Sorry that it is so long and thanks if you stayed with it.
Any spelling mistakes are entirely mine since I refuse to spell check in
Word.

Brett

How many lawyers/doctors per pothole would it take to fill them? 🙂

Steve(trained as a civil engineer, just finished law degree, works with doctors)A

On Sun, 03 Apr 2005 23:51:49 GMT, hippy <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

Fip said:

Has anyone lodged a successful claim for damaged rims due to road
conditions? Sure, the LBS only charges $19 for truing and replacing
spokes...but why should I pay? The condition of Sydney's roads is a
joke....

Give it a shot and let me know how it works out 🙂

hippy

Is the first sign of insanity quoting your own post? 🙂 Just wanted
to add that it's not only expensive but dangerous too. How many times
have you noticed a pot hole at the last minute and swerved out into
the path of traffic to avoid it?

I own two cars, pay rego, tax, expensive fuel prices.....FIX THE
ROADS!

[quote="Fip"]On Sun, 03 Apr 2005 23:51:49 GMT, hippy <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

Fip said:

Has anyone lodged a successful claim for damaged rims due to road
conditions? Sure, the LBS only charges $19 for truing and replacing
spokes...but why should I pay? The condition of Sydney's roads is a
joke....

Give it a shot and let me know how it works out 🙂

hippy

Brett said:

[snip incredibly detailed account of the difficulties in fixing roads]

(There are less engineers in this country than either lawyers or doctors
and you wonder why you have potholes?)

Brett

Lawyers and doctors? Maybe people really do care more about being locked up and being sick than they care about potholes.

Ritch.

PS. Engineers aren't the only profession that works 50hrs for 36hrs pay... trust me on that.

On Mon, 04 Apr 2005 11:22:12 GMT, Brett <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

Remember you are always responsible to ride/drive according
to conditions. So if you hit a large pothole and trash your rim - that's
your fault.

Exactly!

Marty said:

Quoted message said:

Just the thing for my already over-inflated ego..
What electorate are you in Marty? You wanna own it? 🙂
hippy for PM

We'll have to make up some "Hippy for PM" errh... bumper stickers for
our bikes!

Rockin'! 😉

Quoted message said:

I'm in a fairly flat part of the country, I want some mountains built
here for mountain biking. That's a good use of taxpayers money isn't it?

For sure!

Did I mention large 4wd's are now banned within 150k's of all cities?
Oh, anyone caught using one will be forced surrender it immediately - we
need something to build those hills out of 🙂

Every Friday is now a Work Free Day. Overtime is illegal. Physical
activity is compulsory for everyone able. Driving without a justifiable
reason is a fineable offence. McDonalds "food" outlets are banned from
Australia. Hmm.. what else... ? :P

hippy

On Tue, 05 Apr 2005 00:46:51 GMT, hippy <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

Every Friday is now a Work Free Day. Overtime is illegal. Physical
activity is compulsory for everyone able. Driving without a justifiable
reason is a fineable offence. McDonalds "food" outlets are banned from
Australia. Hmm.. what else... ? :P

People with chinbeards will only be allowed outside for
15 minutes a day, at 3:23am.