The experience of countries with the best roads.
21 September marks 260 years since the birth of Scottish engineer John Macadam Loudon. 200 years ago he wrote “Notes on the modern system of road construction”. Surprisingly, but the basic principles still relevant today.
Published in 1816, the book said that the Foundation of the road must be constructed from large stones, and over them put a few layers of gravel chips, covered with tar. For coupling layers in between, they should be roller compacted and the size of gravel dust shall decrease from the bottom layer to the top. The roadbed must be raised above ground level, and the web profile to make the convex – so that rain water dripping on the curb.
In fact, this technique tried to develop and apply to the Macadam, but he was the first who brought the entirety of knowledge to a coherent theory and give it practical a powerful impetus. In 1828 the British introduced rollers for rolling the gravel (steamroller will appear much later, in 1859-m) – the year before the macadam was appointed chief inspector of the roads of great Britain. Later he became also chief engineer of great Britain, his theory quickly became universally accepted in all developed countries, and then appeared in time and the start of the automotive era. We decided to gather in one article some interesting facts about how now roads are built in different countries. So, what do we see 200 years later?
USA
In North America, all roads are divided by importance into groups, and we are particularly interested in two of the highest – Interstate Highways (designated by index I) and US Highways (US), the so-called highways (the fastest of them called Privee), in our highways. All highways in the US are made of concrete, and even if found in asphalt, it is temporary – in the United States “the road” cover with asphalt, to delay the time of overhaul.
Such a trick is allowed for a reason – repair of concrete highway are identical to the construction of a new, but with the addition of dismantling the old route. Concrete is difficult to repair and hard to put – if the asphalt road is ready to use after 8 hours, the concrete attains the ultimate strength only after 28 days, and the opening of concrete road requires several months of continuous work. Why such complexity?
On highways is the maximum flow of vehicles and cargo, and concrete is strong, durable and resistant to high loads that arise due to overweight trucks. The warranty period of concrete highway – 25 years, but in practice, they serve for 30-40 years, and the cost of maintaining the track are minimized. Still, there are areas, launched into operation in the 1960s and is in excellent condition.
In the process of construction under the future route choose the meter of the soil in the trench laid in layers and pour a bed of gravel, sand and clay, then watering it with lime mortar or with a solution of calcium chloride, loosened and re-pour. As a result, the pillow can almost always hold constant the percentage of moisture, which means not to sink and not to spuat. Then on the pillow laid two layers of asphalt with a total thickness of 5-7 cm, but the asphalt in this case is just flat ground for a layer of concrete and insulation, not allowing the water to flow under the concrete canvas through heat seams that connect pieces of fabric together. On asphalt mesh reinforcement is placed, the paver pours a layer of concrete 30 cm from one thermal to the other seam to get the monolithic blade. Then follows almost a month of waiting until the concrete “stand”.
The overhaul of the track do not overlap, and make temporary backups of asphalt on the roadside or you are renovating one side of the track and then the other, but strictly follows the rule – the throughput should not decrease by more than 30%. Repair areas cut off by the borders, are denoted by signs, cones, and continuously updated information boards and temporary stand-ins supplied with markings of a convex glow in the dark chips. Penalties for failure to comply with traffic regulations in the areas of repairs doubled, especially strictly punished speeding.
Ready highway includes at least two lanes in each direction, oncoming lanes are constructive delimiter and is not suitable to each other closer than 10 meters. The right side has a width of not less than 6 meters, the left (Yes, there is, but to move on it is prohibited) – at least 3 meters. For safety reasons the maximum angle ascents and descents on the highway is 6%, the maximum load of 36 tons. The usual circular or loop there is no interchange, there are understudies for Congress on secondary roads. The speed limit on highways: minimum of 30-40 mph (60-80 km/h), maximum 60-80 mph (100-130 km/h).
The construction of roads in the United States – lucrative public business. The Federal road Fund is filled by taxes on cars, road charges, private investment, sale of shares and through the sale of fuel – the Fund takes 2.5 cents of every gallon (4 liters) of gasoline poured into the tank of the car. This latest article brings the Fund tens of billions of dollars annually.
By road transport to 6 billion dollars a year more freight than on rail is so profitable. All trucking infrastructure at a cost estimated in excess of two trillion dollars is more than 15% of the value of all production assets in the USA. Today in the road infrastructure, the US employs more than 300,000 people, and every invested a billion dollars gives you another 35 000 jobs, but can also prevent more than 1,500 deaths and 50,000 injuries in an accident. Over the past 40 years each invested in the construction of roads, the dollar allowed to save two of healthcare, insurance, supply of unemployment and increasing productivity.
UK
Gradually the American experience of construction “betook” migrate to Australia, Asia and Europe. In the beginning of 2016 in Scotland, the home of John Macadam, has commissioned two mobile concrete plant with the capacity of respectively 90 and 140 cubic meters of concrete per hour. These plants have beautiful names, Mobile Master-100 Lion Mobile Master-150 Elephant, and a wheeled chassis, which allows them to navigate from one site and another, constantly supplying the construction site with concrete. This is especially important, because “lion” and “Elephant” construct a transport route in the project Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route, which includes 58 km of new highways, 40 km of feeder roads, 30 km of congresses, two bridges over the rivers Dee and don and approximately 100 structures and objects.
In the UK about 344,000 miles of paved road, and at the moment, most of them paved. As more traditional and usual road construction we will consider the structure of the streets in the cities of England. Let it be London, although travelers say that the quality of the roads in England are all more or less the same. Coating of asphalt streets, and it is trivial patching and cosmetic repairs, but not at the moment when the road becomes unusable, and after a certain period of time – that is, just according to plan.
England is one of the rainiest places on Earth, but, oddly enough, it is impossible even to imagine that the asphalt of the city streets here collapsed after a rain. English asphalt is very durable, although in most cases, because of the softness of the climate, and not susceptible to frost. If there is a pit, employees encircle it with the red chalk and immediately after that rolled into the new asphalt. In a limited area can be a lot of patches, but they are all perfectly (and permanently) fitted to the road surface.
Another feature of English roads – crossfall. He is always there, because it is a simple way to ensure water flow. Draining from the plate, the water reaches the border, and from there goes into the storm drain. Leaves and other debris remain at the curb where raked the harvesting machine.
Deserves attention and the infrastructure of the streets. As they say, unbelievable but true – the bus stop glass is installed to the roadway that passengers were protected from dust and splashes. The wide streets mandatory refuges for pedestrians, fenced. At pedestrian crossings, in the exit area on the roadway, laid with special tiles with anti-slip coating. And do pedestrian crossings for motorists are designated by two orange lamps on striped posts – they are very visible both day and night.
Germany
Fast forward to Germany, famous for its autobahns. A cover of the autobahn can be like asphalt and concrete. But beneath this top layer is a multilayer extruded “pillow”, the structure is similar to the us and having a depth of two meters.
In the construction of concrete highway, the road covered with a special film that protects the concrete from drying sun and rain. In case of rain when you create asphalt road builders simply stop work until it is fully dry area.
All roads have a warranty period of operation, and during this period, all deviations from the rules of the road, the company will eliminate at his own expense. Patching here is not the move – is entirely measured from a large section of the road, because any inaccuracies, errors, and further destruction of the paintings is fraught with huge lawsuits.
A significant part of the modern roads of Germany built in the days of the Third Reich and is designed for the movement of the columns of heavy military equipment, so the roads are still successfully cope with the huge traffic of trucks. And the first German autobahn still in operation, more than 80 years.
Finland
Finland, along with the UAE, France, mentioned by Germany and several European countries, regularly included in top ten countries with the best roads, despite the harsh climate. There is also much emphasis on layered trebovanii cushion that serves as the basis for the future road.
Finns have learned to build roads, even on unstable ground, in a substrate of peat or clay are special stabilizing additives. In this Scandinavian country in a stable condition support even dirt roads.
Helsinki was one of the first places in the world where there are heated sidewalks, remaining dry in the winter – the first such in the Finnish capital was decided in 1998. With years of road construction experience of developed countries came to the conclusion that to warm up the canvas is often far better than a sprinkle of reagents, and to date, heated sidewalks, bus stops, railway platforms and roads, in addition to Finland and other Scandinavian countries, is in the United States, Canada, and even Russia (though experimental platform with a heated sidewalk at the city hall of Moscow launched in 2003, can hardly be considered a major achievement) and of course in Japan.
Japan
In Japan, heated pavements and roads there are in all cities where snow falls in winter. By the way, the climate in some areas of Japan is not too different softness, for example, in Hokkaido the average annual temperature is only +8 °C. Is heated on the slopes, so even in heavy snow, on these roads there is usually no and snowflakes.
The main material of the pavement here is also concrete – because of already known reasons: durability, strength, resistance to high loads. Construction technology similar to American, but in Japan actively using and another plus of concrete is that it allows to implement complex multi-level interchanges.
On the construction work of the experts of different fields, and each is solely responsible for your site. A lot of time is a preparatory stage, because it worked out to detail a plan for future roads. In addition, if the road must pass through private property, lawyers and the government need to successfully negotiate the purchase of the property.
China
The Chinese in their eternal desire to beat the neighbors reached an unprecedented rate of construction of roads. Company of China able to provide the speed of construction of 750 meters of road per hour, and with a quality that rivals the best indicators of Europe.
Choosing the American model and road construction over the past fifteen years, the Chinese have built more than 70,000 kilometers of highways, and up to this point, the rate reached 30 000 kilometers of highways per year. The warranty on the road in China is 20-25 years.
Georgia
In the second part of the story will refer to certain countries of the former USSR. Their culture of road construction after the Soviet Union was formed in different ways. In Georgia, for example, roads have always been relatively good – partly because of the resistant rock.
In recent years there has been widespread restoration of old roads and construction of new: minor rural roads covered with asphalt, and highways do in the us scheme – concrete. Although called in the German style – highways. The speed limit is repeating the Russian rules: on the highways (motorways) is 110 km/h on other rural roads – 90 km/h.
Since 2012, Georgia built the highway Batumi-Tbilisi and the part of this highway with lighting, cameras, light Board and recreation areas are already in operation. Ultimately, the path between the capital and Batumi (about 380 km) should be reduced to three hours. Not so long ago has commissioned another highway, with a length of 17.4 km, built by the Chinese company Sinohydro Corporation Ltd – section of Rustavi-Tbilisi.
Latvia
Latvia was in a completely different situation. This country has always been a bit more “Soviet” than neighboring Lithuania and Estonia, and in many ways – particularly in terms of road construction is rendered no better service.
Until 2003, the country had a special road Fund, which was supposed to accumulate funds for road construction, but neither its liquidation in connection with the “opacity” or the now discussed his recovery in a new format that does not give a clear answer to the question: why collect government taxes do not fall within the scope of road construction? What a familiar situation!
Since 2004 Latvia is European Union, which allocates money to improve quality of roads, but by 2018 a large part of these funds will be expended, and real progress has not happened. The worst situation is with the local roads, for which EU funding must not be used. Another patient (and also very familiar) question – quality of repair of roads. Naturally, the cost of road maintenance in Latvia is higher than in neighboring countries.
By 2015, more than 20,000 km of state roads in Latvia is only 9,000 km was paved, with over 4,000 km of them, according to the newspaper “Neatkariga”, were in poor or very poor condition. In 2013, the world economic forum conducted a study on the quality of roads in the world, and among 144 participating countries Latvia was on the 99th, near the Zambia and Zimbabwe. Estonia fell by 61, Lithuania – 32-E.
