Potholes misery - your views online

Up to a dozen vehicles ended up with burst tyres in one weekend due to potholes on a stretch of road in Balerno, a councillor claims.

Pentland Hills Conservative councillor Graeme Bruce said he had gone to the aid of motorists who had fallen victim to the “craters” on Lanark Road West.

John Smith: When will councils get it into their thick skulls that core services and maintenance come first out of the budgets and not last? Decades of criminal mismanagement of public funds has resulted in the absurd/catastrophic situation whereby the roads are deteriorating at a greater rate than the council can afford to resurface and repair them. Adequate repairs are now estimated to exceed the entire annual budget of Edinburgh City Council. Puts it into perspective.

Claire A A Eadie: I hope they sue the pants off the council. The roads in the city have been in decline for years. The council need to stop the vanity projects, paining roads like Mr Tumbles’ bag. Pedestrians and cyclists are paying penalties for these potholes too.

Just some of the potholes said to have damaged cars on Lanark Road West

Louise Davie: It cost us £100 to go for pizza three weeks ago! I notified the council. They filled the hole – now where is the compensation? Our tyre burst loudly. It’s shocking

Frank McKay: This is because we had years of an SNP-run council doing temporary fixes – blob of tar, pat down with a spade within five minutes and off they go. A few minutes later a vehicle runs over it and the tar is removed. The new council have been in for months now and seems like nothing has changed – but they will throw money at projects like Spaces for People.

Sarah Louise Whitcombe: Some of the potholes are just awful. I am surprised that people have not had suspension issues or lost wheels alogether. I’ve even witnessed one bursting a bus tyre before – it takes some pothole to do that.

Tom Zjag: The council keeps resurfacing roads with an inch of dry Tarmac which crumbles within two-three years, spends fortune on little patches where the whole road needs resurfacing and blames drivers for deteriorating infrastructure. Work takes five times longer than it should and the result is appalling. Whoever was responsible for resurfacing the Lady Road should be dragged outside and sho.

Brian Gunn: If they filled the holes with Coco Pops and milk they would probably last longer.

Marek Dziekan: These are the 12 motorists you know about. There’ll be hundreds more.

Henry Campbell Gillan: 75 per cent of council funding comes from Westminster via Holyrood. All councils suffer pothole problems that are due to chronic underfunding from Westminster. Tory austerity?

Colin Henderson: Given most councils don’t want you to drive and left-wing parties in general are pushing this, I think it's a deliberate act by the councils to deter drivers.

Lewis Kinnear: I was in Morocco last week and the roads there were so much smoother. The only thing Edinburgh roads beat them on was road markings.

New park plan

Work is set to get under way to transform land at the Granton gas holder into a new city park – including a space to host outdoor events. The new park, which has now been granted planning permission, will serve an influx of new residents moving to the area, where more than 3,000 sustainable homes are being built

Kirsty Spiers: Maybe use some of that money to tidy up the the park right next to it? I don’t think it has been cut back in years. Look after the parks you already have.

Krisztian Koczo: I don’t think that this is the most important thing to spend money on at the moment.

William Kay: Now where have I seen something like this before? Oh yes, Amsterdam. And their one has a tram terminus just across the way as well (waits for anti-trams people to turn purple).

Chris Fleming: Why the hell why are they not knocking the gas tower down and building more student accommodation?

William Crawford: And yet in October they were planning on making £80 million of cuts to essential services. Go figure, eh?

Ian Montgomery: This money was already set aside for the new council estate.

Janet Watson: I would rather the money went towards saving the King’s Theatre.

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