New Contract: Road Surfacing & Associated Services: Fill & Download for Free

A Russian saying states that our nation knows two eternal plagues: morons and roads.During the post-Soviet decades, as Russia grew richer and Russians became a well-off car-driving nation, the quality of out roads has improved. Especially the roads where President Putin’s motorcades happen to be driving, or are likely to, are of required standard. The same is true for main roads going in southern and western direction that may be instrumental for quickly moving Russian military troops to the borders. If you check out the famous investigative videos documenting transportation of the ill-fated BUK missile from Russia to East Ukraine that shot down the Malaysian airliner, the roads shown there are no worse than in Europe.However, three things stand in the way of making our roads better:Weather. Most of Russia has harsh continental climate, with temperatures ranging between 30 C in summer and -30 in winter. During the winter half of the year, frosts and thaws gnaw incessantly at road surfaces and make their building and maintenance very expensiveGreat distances and thin population. These make the ratio of the car traffic volume to the length of paved roads too low. The “nuisance cost” and the rapid amortization of vehicles ruined on bad roads in many places are still less expensive than decent paving.Corruption. The poorer is the quality of pavement, the sooner there will be need for laying a new one. Much more occasions for lucrative in-family contracts and satisfying kick-backs. Before the recent clean-up in our banking system, loan-financed municipal contracts for road construction were among the preferred money-laundering practices.History plays an important part, too. From the very beginning, rivers were the main, and most often the sole way of transportation. This made most of Russia safe from large-scale foreign interventions until we thinned our forests enough for the Crimean Tatar cavalry to reach as far as Moscow. More and more roads between cites and disparate watercourses appeared, but they almost never were anything more than broad strips of tramped-down dirt. Twice a year, in spring and autumn rain and thawed snow transformed them into marshes, effectively stopping all traffic.(Napoleon and Hitler didn’t know about this attribute of our roads, and this cost them very dearly. Since that time “Russian roads” often have been listed among our most powerful military defences.)The YouTube clip below with a soulful song about countryside roads shows the variety of land transportation in Russia. It includes railroads that since the middle of the XIX century have been the symbol of government-led colonization of Russia. One type of transportation is conspicuously absent from the clip, though: paved roads.

Road surface distributes the load to the different sections below (Base, sub-base, etc) to resits the load they need to be thoroughly compacted. If some are is not compacted well the weight resistance will be poor so the surface will break. A typical trick in the US is to do a lousy job at the compacting stage, the road surface will break in some years… and the companies will have another contract.Now, you need to look at the surface of new roads and compare with the 20+ years expected Roads Supposed To Last. Good Question: How Long Are Our Roads Supposed To Last?you see a road failing before, you can bet that somebody pays bribes and make a healthy profit.

According to Lucius Riccio, Professor of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University and a former Department of Transport Commissioner, New York City may experience a whopping 250,000 to 300,000 potholes by the end of spring 2016—the highest number of potholes since the 1970s. In the aftermath of the January 2016 blizzard, a large number of potholes were created across the city, wreaking havoc for motorists. But according to Riccio, the storm should be not bear too much blame. He says New York’s problem with road surfaces stems chiefly from a different villain: poor maintenance. Potholes are created by the expansion and contraction of water entering the ground under the pavement. During the winter, as water seeps into the ground under the road surface, it freezes, accumulating more space. As a result, increased pressure on the road surface causes it to bend and crack, weakening the surface and resulting in potholes. Additionally, they may also be created as the weight of cars and trucks pass over the weak spot in the road. Riccio argues that a high number of potholes indicates a failure to maintain city streets: “Repairing potholes is far more costly than preventing them,” he said. “It costs the city more.”The Department of Transportation said it plans to repair more potholes across all five boroughs in NYC next year, along residential streets and arterial roadways. In a press release in March 2016, the mayor announced that the city had filled the 1- millionth pothole in the city and pledged a further $242 million to repave the city’s roads over the next two years. Let´s hope that nothing terrible will happen to our beloved city!