A council has invested £1 milluon into the resurfacing of rural roads to ensure road users experience smoother journeys.
A summer of major investment by Lancashire County Council has seen them use an innovative technique which rapidly repairs potholes using a high-pressure spray.
Spray injection patching can achieve up to 200 repairs a day per machine.
The council has doubled its budget for this repair technique compared with last year, and four of the patching machines are currently at work throughout the county.
There is 700 miles of rural road in Lancashire and the speed of each repair means the machines can cover a lot of ground.
The machines are being used in a preventative way to ‘find and fix’ on roads where the most potholes are being reported, while also sealing smaller defects as they move along, helping to prevent more potholes appearing in the future.
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They work using a multi-functional hose which initially blasts compressed air to remove all dust, debris, and water from the affected area.
Once the defect has been cleaned, a cold bitumen emulsion is applied to seal it. An aggregate mix is then fired in at high speed, along with another coating of bitumen emulsion to form a high-quality repair.
This means the rural roads will be smoother and ensure more comfortable journeys for cyclists and motorists.
County Councillor Rupert Swarbrick, cabinet member for highways and transport, said: “We’re investing around £35m into out highways this year, and have doubled the budget for spray injection patching to bring our rural roads into better condition.
“We have a very extensive rural network in Lancashire and this method is a really efficient and cost-effective way of getting on top of the repairs which are needed, which we simply could not do within the same time and budget using traditional techniques.
“The cold and wet Lancashire winters means that it is always a challenge to keep our roads in good condition, however all the maintenance we are carrying out at the moment will make a real difference by the end of the summer.”
It is estimated that last year more than 18,500 spray injection repairs were made on Lancashire’s roads, based on the volume of surfacing material used.
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