Recently, Lyne Road in Kidlington was patchily resurfaced in an operation that was due to take four days but was completed in three.
A few years ago, stretches of Banbury Road in Oxford of a similar length were completely resurfaced overnight.
Three days working in Lyne Road at about nine hours each day is 27 hours of work.
If that stretch of Lyne Road were one unit of resurfacing (an ‘ur’), we can work out the work rate of the two jobs.
Since only 17 per cent of Lyne Road was patchily resurfaced, 0.17 urs took 27 hours, which is a work rate of 0.006 urs per hour.
Banbury Road, being 30 per cent wide, is 1.3 urs and was resurfaced in 10 hours (overnight): a work rate of 0.13 urs per hour.
The Kidlington work took 22 times longer or was 22 times slower.
If the Kidlington work had been carried out at the same rate as in Oxford, it would have taken eight minutes. The whole of Lyne Road would have taken about 45 minutes.
Both jobs were carried out by the same authority, Oxfordshire County Council, using some of the same contractors.
How much money could have been saved by applying even a fraction of the Oxford resources to patching Lyne Road?
JOHN MacALLISTER, Chamberlain Place, Kidlington
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