Some important modern problems of the transport engineering, which occur in the newly built and modernised road objects, have been indicated in the work. A discussion was conducted regarding the methods of assessing the stability of slopes of the road embankments, the obtained stability margins and the interpretation of obtained results in the specific cases of foundations of the road earth structures. Presented observations result from analysing the stability assessments of slopes of the road embankments, which was conducted on many communication objects, characterised by high variability of foundation conditions.

Road embankments, especially their slopes’ surfaces, must fulfil all the requirements concerning the exploitation criteria after the completion of construction works. This is very important while constructing or modernizing the embankments, based on the substrate including low-strength soils as well as in simple ground conditions (most convenient). The last dozen or so years of intensive construction of transport infrastructure have shown how big is the problem of ensuring the required volumes of qualified soil material for the construction of road embankments or the modernization of railway embankments. The depleting deposits of natural and easily accessible soils for the construction of embankments result in the need to use anthropogenic soils, for example, in the form of aggregates from the recycling of construction waste and other locally available waste materials, usually in the form of slag and ashes from the combined heat and power plants. In such cases, there’s a need to treat transportation earth structures individually in the scope of designing and quality control, because there are no applicable standard provisions in this scope.This work indicates some of these important contemporary problems of transport engineering, occurring in newly built and modernized road objects, such as the stability of road embankments based on a low-strength substrate, use of anthropogenic soils and materials originating from the recycling of concrete surfaces for the construction of road embankments.

This work presents the geotechnical problems occurring in the interaction area between road embankments and the bridge structures in case a subsoil characterised by complex and complicated geological and engineering conditions. These significant problems that occur during the design, performance and exploitation of the abutment structures, are illustrated on the example of engineering practice in Lower Silesia, concerning a road embankment that constitutes access to the bridge. The results of numerical analyses concerning the process of consolidation of low-strength soils and their impact on the settlements of road embankment indicate the need to carry out such analyses also in the cases, when the soft soils occur in the direct geotechnical layer under the designed embankment. The Authors included in this article a discussion regarding other effective actions and solutions that can be used in the design and performance phase, leading to the elimination or reduction of problems concerning the connection of engineering structures with road embankments, which have been recurring for years, ultimately resulting in the improvement of quality, comfort and safety of road exploitation.