that makes sense. the M1 through befordshire is over 3 feet thick ( about a metre to the metricly impaired) when it finally breaks down it is very expensive to replace. cost driven not best practice for the conditions.
sw20,
Jan 25, 11:11am
Going by your previous posts about what tiny cars you have travelled around the country in, it ain't the road that is noisy.
harm_less,
Jan 25, 11:46am
The road foundations are only as good as the soils they are placed on and our relatively young volcanic soils have high moisture content and are referred to as 'plastic' by roading engineers. The failure of the recently built section of SH3 near Hawera is an example of this. Roading designs that flex on the soft subsoils they are situated on will fail under the treatment they receive from heavy vehicles, especially now with the 50T limit, and the surface sealing layer then allows stormwater to penetrate with hydraulic forces adding to the damage. Hot mix is a rigid material which just breaks up under these conditions irrespective of the depth of basecoarse it is placed on so not suitable over such soils, but fine in the older geologies of the likes of the UK or Australia.
tygertung,
Jan 25, 12:32pm
Perhaps smaller cars reduce weight by not bothering with large masses of sound deadening layers.
If the road surface is rougher, there is more noise generated by the tyres.
If smaller chips are used on the tar seal it is smoother and not as noisy.
tweake,
Jan 25, 9:15pm
my understanding is that the actual road building isn't to bad. yes soil types suck but overall hotmix works just fine on them. we do have places where its used and it works just fine. tho it would be a waste if used on poorly built roads. there are lots of spots where the road sinks because of historic bad road design. eg they put the road on top of a spring that was the farm water supply (probably cost a mill to fix that mistake) and using hotmix on those bits is probably a waste of time.
the main reason for ship and seal is short term cost, even tho its more expensive in the long term.
50 ton trucks are a non-issue. they are 60 ton trucks limited to 50 ton.
tweake,
Jan 25, 9:17pm
nz is not special. we don't have anything that other countries don't have. its not "our system", its being done around the world.
laurelanne,
Jan 25, 10:34pm
I always understood because of our ground conditions we developed a cost effective way of building roads in NZ. When the Ministry of Works was disbanded, I remember reading a news article stating, we ran the risk of losing a lot of institutional knowledge in the works department when it comes to building roads. You should see the balls up they made trying to reseal the main street of Ngatea last year.
tygertung,
Jan 26, 7:43am
Bring back the ministry of works!
tweake,
Jan 26, 6:35pm
basically, no. they don't do anything that isn't done around the world. its more about how many corners can they cut and get away with BS to the public. hence why we have even had them write to the local papers with their BS excuses. they are quite happy at out right lying to the public.
tweake,
Jan 26, 6:39pm
thats not a bad idea. even the police here has commented about the issue of having different roading/traffic control crews every time and they all do it different. at least with one dept they would get some consistency.
also one big thing i liked was that they used proper sized graders for grading gravel roads. the contractors use whatever they have spare and its often the really big machines that have a full road width blade. we have had cars hit by them and i've driven through the ditch to avoid one. contractors gear is not suited to the job.
tony9,
Jan 26, 6:52pm
Steel. Two rails with steel wheels running on them.
headcat,
Jan 26, 7:06pm
Did the potholes sneak up on your wheels and buckle them . or did you drive over them too fast?
martin11,
Jan 26, 7:07pm
No country in the world has ever run them and made money out of the rail network always propped up by the governments . Handiling of goods increases by at least 3 times
s_nz,
Jan 26, 7:11pm
Countries don't expect their road networks to make a profit either. Not sure why people hold rail to a different standard.
headcat,
Jan 26, 7:13pm
Ever noticed anyone obeying them?
bill-robinson,
Jan 26, 7:22pm
they all say "i will slow next time" repeated every time the works appear.
tygertung,
Jan 26, 7:35pm
When were the last time the roads made a profit? Very expensive for everyone concerned.
tweake,
Jan 26, 7:48pm
some road works get around that by using a lead vehicle. tho we had one spot that was so bad it was a drag race through the road works. they ended up getting the cops out and they sat in the middle of the road works. everyone drove slow then.
tweake,
Sep 22, 2:58pm
black holes in black tarseal and the road is covered in water. not uncommon here to a have a line of cars with broken rims due to the road potholing every time it rains.
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