A revolutionary machine is being considered as the answer to Dumfries and Galloway’s pothole-plagued roads.
Construction company JCB has released a new ‘Pothole Pro’ vehicle which can fix a single pothole in around eight minutes.
First trialled by Stoke-on-Trent City Council last year, the machine fixed three years’ worth of potholes in just four months.
With the terrible state of surfaces across Dumfries and Galloway one of the main complaints from residents, council roads chiefs are currently investigating investing in the new machinery which costs upwards of £165,000.
The issue was raised at the council’s communities committee last week.
Councillor Pauline Drysdale, who represents Castle Douglas and Crocketford said: “Are we any further forward with research into the JCB Pothole Pro that we spoke about at the start of the year?
“It operates at eight times the speed of a normal pothole machine. I appreciate that the capital investment is huge, I would imagine, but I’m just wondering if we’re still considering that as a council?
“I know if would very much please constituents, road users, and cyclists as well.”
Council roads manager Stuart Caven said: “We’re still doing a wee bit of study on the Pothole Pro and other options, along with fleet (department) at the moment.
“But we’ll certainly provide another update to members when we have further information on what we’re looking to progress with.”
JCB says the machine does away with the laborious process of fixing potholes currently used by councils, allowing a smaller number of workers to race through a day’s work in much less time.
Usually a team of roads workers have to excavate and clean the area around a pothole using con saws, jackhammers, pickaxes, spades and brushes, which can take around 50 minutes.
However, the Pothole Pro machine, which is similar in size to a tractor, has three different attachments specifically designed to sort out any pothole repair efficiently and permanently.
Stoke-on-Trent City Council became the first local authority to invest in the machine in 2021, having trialled it for a number of months.
It was then used to repair 10,000m² of road – an area equivalent to eight Olympic-sized swimming pools – in just 130 days. This would normally have taken 1,040 days.
James Harper, a highways operations team manager with Stoke-on-Trent City Council, says on the JCB website: “It normally takes us two-to-three days to take out a 70m² patch. With this machine we can have this done before breakfast.”
