Text your pothole !

ROAD users in Oxfordshire, will be able to have more of a say about how highway maintenance money is spent in the county, via social media.

Oxfordshire County Council says it is working on a new road maintenance policy and wants to make sure that the day-to-day experience of road users is considered when deciding which roads to upgrade.

“Road condition is at the top the list for many people when it comes to what they would like to improve. You only have to look at social media to see this, which is why we want to take social media posts or ‘street tweets’ into account:” said Councillor, Yvonne Constance, Cabinet Member for Environment.

Now, Oxfordshire roads are assessed and decisions made on where to spend money based on factors such as condition and the amount of traffic that use them – purely engineering factors.

However a ‘social score’ will be added so that feedback from communities and road users can help add weight to the case for work to be done elsewhere.

This means that feedback from social media posts, letters and emails could be captured as part of the assessment process.

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