Roads to ruin

SIR - Doubtless you will be inundated with letters re the Highways cash bonus (Herts Advertiser, June 25). This asset management approach perhaps explains why we see a lot of Herts Highways vehicles racing about the roads, doing no apparent work – they

SIR - Doubtless you will be inundated with letters re the Highways cash bonus (Herts Advertiser, June 25). This "asset management" approach perhaps explains why we see a lot of Herts Highways vehicles racing about the roads, doing no apparent work - they are busy "comparing"!

How on earth you compare the state of all the roads in the county in relation to each other is beyond me. Surely you would still come up with the winners of that contest being the worst anyway. The trouble is, Mr Stuart Pile, practically all of the roads are in the WORST category! They start on ours on Monday - we are to be "deep-cleaned" and "essentially maintained".

I'm sure, judging from the pretty pattern of spray-can paint on the surface, that it just means another temporary filling-in job. That doesn't leave much road in between - it badly needs resurfacing. Anyway, what are they going to do with the prize money? Have a share-out? Fill in a few more holes?

JUDY HAMBLIN

Overstone Road

Harpenden

SIR - There is considerable dissatisfaction conveyed by Peter Mannell in his letter regarding road repairs (Herts Advertiser, July 2).

I too have wondered at the apparent lack of joined-up thinking when seeing the recently resurfaced Crabtree Lane being dug up (more than once) by utility companies. But let us not be devoured by negativity. Let us rejoice in the fact that the speed humps in the lower section have been permanently removed.

Our next campaign must be Topstreet Way in Harpenden, where the triple humps necessitate and encourage an erratic, uncomfortable and unsafe driving procedure. Can Mr Mannell or anyone else tell me if these humps were requested by residents or whether St Albans District Council just thought they were a good idea?

JOHN COLLINS

Barton Close

Harpenden

SIR - Whilst holidaying in Upper Wharfedale in the Yorkshire Dales, a notice on one of the minor roads declared that it would be closed for several days as resurfacing work had to be done. I was astonished as the present state of the road was twenty times better than anything in St Albans. What is the North Yorkshire County Council doing right that Hertfordshire seems to be totally incapable of? One doesn't have to be a rocket scientist to know that the longer the local roads are left to disintegrate further, the far greater the expense to put them right.

JAMES FITCH

Abbots Park

St Albans