UK Government transport minister Mark Harper has received a live demonstration of a machine designed to help end the ‘scourge’ of potholes.
The minister was shown the JCB Pothole Pro during a visit to the company’s Derbyshire engine plant and saw how the machine repairs a pothole in less than eight minutes.
The demonstration came just days after JCB announced it had won its largest order yet for 50 Pothole Pros from Dawsongroup, for deployment with councils up and down the country.
Mark Harper MP said, “Potholes is an issue that gets raised a lot by my constituents and raised with me as secretary of state by lots of colleagues in parliament and that is why we put in place £5 billion over this spending review period, specifically for local authorities to pay for local road resurfacing, including pothole maintenance.
“That should give them the confidence to plan and to have a proper strategy to improve the quality of the roads they are responsible for. It means they should take the time and the trouble to think about how effectively they’re going to turn that money into improved roads and innovative solutions, like the one we’ve seen here today with the Pothole Pro.”
JCB said local authority data shows the Pothole Pro can complete a pothole repair in less than eight minutes, four times quicker than standard methods and equivalent to 700 potholes per month. With a 40km/h travel speed, the machine can also ‘rapidly’ relocate between sites without additional transport costs.
