India: engineers asked to go for concrete roads
Keeping various factors such as cost, including towards maintenance and sustainability in mind, Highways engineers must go for cement concrete roads instead of relying on bitumen, said S. Jaswant Kumar, chief general manager of National Highways Authority of India (NHAI).
He was speaking at a workshop on ‘Sustainable concrete pavements: Practices, challenges and directions’ organised by the Indian Concrete Institute at IIT-Madras on Wednesday.
Mr. Kumar said that with the 11th Five-Year Plan allocating INR3 lakh crore for road construction and the country going through a rapid phase of expansion of its road network, technology upgrade, energy efficiency and maintenance issues have to be kept in mind. “Though some of the existing cement concrete roads in the country are as old as 60 years, there is still hesitation to shift from bitumen surfaces Engineers seem to lack awareness of design concepts and construction methodology,” he added.
Published under Cement News
