Interesting facts about the roads in the USA, Germany and Russia

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

American highways, like most local roads of different categories, are concrete. And, unlike European ones, they are designed for much higher loads and bandwidth. The German Autobahn has long become synonymous in Russia with a high-quality, reliable and high-speed road. The cost of building roads in Russia is either a product of the highest quality, or a sophisticated method of money laundering. Many are inclined towards the second option …

Roads in the USA

Rapidly growing China has chosen the American option for laying highways and over the past fifteen years has laid more than 70,000 km. There are only 50 800 km of federal highways in Russia.

In our country, the first builder of strong, durable concrete highways designed for high weight and high-speed loads was Beria, when he was engaged in the creation of two air defense rings with the latest anti-aircraft missiles around Moscow. So back in 1955, at a distance of 50 and 100 km from the capital, the so-called Big and Small concrete rings with two traffic lanes appeared. These concrete blocks of slabs in two rolls were poured on the spot and, as the rumor testifies, the foreman immured his name and the date of pouring into each slab - Lavrenty Pavlovich ensured the responsibility of the foremen for many years to come. Indeed, these rings serve to this day - only ten years ago, in those places where they were worn out, they began to be covered with asphalt, they will also partially enter the new Central Ring Road.

Technology

The track itself is laid out in the form of a complex "hamburger". First, about a meter of soil is chosen for it. Then, layer by layer with a rammer, a pillow of gravel, sand and clay is poured, watered with water and a solution of calcium chloride or lime mortar. Then they loosen it again and tamp it again. The result is a pillow that retains a constant percentage of water and does not sag during road use. At the next stage, a double layer of dense asphalt with a thickness of 5-7 cm is laid - thereby, firstly, a flat surface is prepared for placing concrete. And secondly, it serves as waterproofing and does not allow water to flow under the concrete through thermal seams. After that, the reinforcing mesh is laid and the concrete paver fills this section of the road with a 30-cm layer of concrete from one thermal seam to another - the concrete must be monolithic. It will acquire full strength only after 28 days, but such a highway will serve without major repairs guaranteed for 25 years, and in practice - 30-40 years. There are sections of such roads, laid as early as 1960 - they are still in excellent condition.

It is clear that the United States was not born with a road, as the Americans like to say, “a silver spoon in the mouth”: in 1901 there were only 1200 km of paved roads of slabs, bricks and asphalt (in Russia, by the end of the 19th century, there were 10 000 km of paved roads - crushed stone, gravel or cobblestones). And cars were a rare luxury - Americans used horses for short trips, and trains for long journeys. Everything changed after Ford in 1908 launched the world's first automobile assembly line, from which mass cars for the "average American" began to roll off in millions of copies, and put America on wheels.

And then the Yankees rushed by leaps and bounds, but haphazardly: new roads were laid at the initiative and desire-desire of businessmen who negotiated with the authorities of states or cities, they often intersected, duplicated each other and were very different in quality. Nevertheless, by the beginning of the 1920s, more than 250,000 km of motorways had already been tuned.

In general, road construction developed in the context of the spontaneous market of the Wild West era (like all American capitalism at that time), creating new problems for the growing wave of universal motorization of the country. And because of this obvious need, by the end of the 1930s, the US administration first developed a plan for the creation of a federal highway system. The first American "concrete" was built in 1930 in Indiana.

Roads in Germany

The German Autobahn has long become synonymous in Russia with a high-quality, reliable and high-speed road.

A typical autobahn in Germany can be imagined as a “sandwich”, which consists of a frost-resistant base layer, a 25 cm crushed stone-sand base reinforced with cement, a cement concrete coating 27 cm thick. exposed aggregate concrete (German waschbeton) or diamond surface milling.

This is how the entire section of the track looks from above: three yellow cars crawling like caterpillars one after another.

The first is needed for the device of the lower layer of the coating, the second for the device of the upper layer. The third applies a protective film-forming agent and gives the finished shape and texture.

The "rails" are the drainage system arranged in the center of the road. The string stretched parallel to the road works as a guide.

The seams are cut in order to avoid cracking of the screed, which can cause damage to the road.

Seams are sealed with rubber seals.

This is how the section of the repaired track looks like.

How much is such a road worth? According to a representative of the contractor, the entire project to repair a 10-kilometer section of the highway (three lanes plus a shoulder) cost 20 million euros. That is, 1 km = 2 million euros. In Russia, on average, 1 km of repairing a federal highway costs 850 thousand euros (data from March 2017), despite the fact that we already have the roads themselves.

But at the same time, the standard service life of a concrete highway is 30 years (in fact, more), and an asphalted one - 13-15 years (in fact, less). In Europe, thanks to technology, the initial cost of building a concrete roadbed is almost equal to the cost of laying "classic" asphalt, because there they are increasingly building from cement concrete.

There are also disadvantages. For example, after passing the asphalt paver, the road is ready in 8 hours, and concrete gains full strength only after a few days. And if the base has fallen into disrepair, you need to change the whole slab, you will not get off with a "patch" repair. At the same time, the chance that the road will get damaged is much less: the pavement distributes the load over a wider area, trucks “kill” the road less and do not create rutting.

Roads in Russia

The fourth transport ring in Moscow - a section of the road of four incomplete kilometers - is about 18 billion rubles, and a kilometer of this route - 578 million dollars.

The cost of roads in Russia, and, in particular, in the Moscow region, has long broken every conceivable record. In the construction of one kilometer of the roadway, 10 times more funds are invested here than in the capitals of European states and 15 times more than in the United States.

The list of very expensive Russian highways is quite impressive. It contains both the St. Petersburg ring road and the Sochi bypass highway

Domestic and foreign experts argue that such a high cost of road construction is either the result of a creation of the highest quality, or a sophisticated method of money laundering. Many are inclined towards the second option.

For comparison, we can recall that before the records of Russian road construction, the most expensive was a kilometer of a tunnel carved through a mountain in Switzerland. Its cost reached forty million euros.

Any comparison of the cost of road construction is not in Russia's favor. China is a living reproach, where the construction of a kilometer of the route often costs no more than 800 thousand dollars. And in the USA and the European Union - the figure is higher, but still much less than in our country: a kilometer of road construction costs about $ 2.5 million. Compare: $ 20 million in Moscow and $ 6 and a half in other regions of Russia.