Transport
Watch: DoI’s Emergency Mountain Repairs
With the DoI sharing over 30 pics from the work, we thought they needed a bit of music so turned it into this video.
After a small defect turned into a bigger hole, the DoI carried out emergency repairs over the weekend to the Mountain Road.
The repairs included replacing a culvert and relaying the road.
With the DoI sharing over 30 pics from the work, we thought they needed a bit of music so turned it into this video.
A spokesperson said: ‘Last week a small surface defect developed in centre of the carriageway just above Guthrie’s Memorial on the Mountain Mile, A18 Mountain Road, and temporary surface repairs were immediately undertaken. On Friday this worsened. One of our engineers examined the site and found that a small sink hole was developing. The road was immediately closed to traffic on safety grounds and to allow the road to be excavated and the site investigated.
‘It was found that the old combined stone culvert/clay pipe drainage system that takes water from the high side of the road to the low side had completely collapsed across the centre line of the carriageway. On the Mountain Mile there are more than 130 lateral culverts, each located every 10 to 20 metres, . While over the years some of these have been replaced by modern drainage pipes as part of road reconstruction, or specific drainage works , many are still of the old stone built variety.
We are grateful to our staff (both construction and at the Poortown asphalt plant) and our suppliers (equipment and concrete) who stepped up at little or no notice to come in at the weekend and get this work done as soon as possible.’
