what if this was after TSHTF?

[Devonian]

(31 October 2014, 15:10)bigpaul Wrote: DEV me old mucker, if a serious event were to happen the entire transport system would shut down in weeks never mind a decade or two. but I'm not so much talking about the infrastructure itself as what goes on around it, given that in a serious event (we ARE talking TSHTF here not some minor local difficulty)no repairs would be undertaken or even doable. without maintenance gullies and ditches flood, then they flood OVER onto the road taking silt, soil and other sedements onto the road, the water recedes but leaves behind the silt and soils, onto this is deposited seeds and other material by storms, winds and birds, these then grow onto the road bed and as I have already said within 12 months these can be a metre high or more in the case of saplings and the like, these will break up the already potholed road and make it impassable, to say nothing of fallen trees and other materials, winter flooding will undermine a lot of the roads as has happened in the last winter or two(the river road at Umberleigh on the A377 Barnstaple to Exeter road has had traffic lights due to road erosion for the last 12 months) by which time their is no road fuel left anyway so I doubt anyone is going very far, and like NR said we'll all be walking or riding anyway and it wont be motorised.

Yes agreed that 'systems' would fail very quickly, but the infrastructure would largely remain intact.

As someone in the trade, I can assure you that you really are over estimating how much maintenance is needed on roads. They will remain useable for decades, so what if a gulley is blocked (half of them already are!!) or if plants/grass start growing in the cracks and lifting the slabs (have you been on Exmoor recently), it's not going to make the roads unusable.

As for the roads suddenly being buried under several feet of soil and silt, it will not happen, OK if you get a landslide it may bury a small section, but the rest of the road will be fine.

I can show you plenty of old disused roads on Exmoor which have been gated and abandoned for 30+ years, these roads are all still passable and haven't become buried and lost......

Same with a lot of the old disused rail lines - take the Bideford to Abbotsham one as an example, that hasn't been used (or maintained) since before the first world war, although the tracks are long gone, the route is still there and hasn't deteriorated other than over hanging trees and bushes.