This research has been brought to the stage in which it is producing good,-practical results.73. The Author and his team started it in about 1967. That is quite a short time from knowing very little about the subject to having the reward of knowing that the results achieved are securing practical and useful application. This well conceived research can have a handsome pay-off. When the work was started it was expected to pay off, but the amount was not known. It seems to be producing about L2 million profit a year at the moment. Success is usually obtained in research of this kind if from the very beginning the research workers are working actively with the practitioners. One of the first things was to meet the people who were concerned with these problems in practice. That association has continued from the start and has had the effects of keeping the research on practical grounds and of ensuring that as the results emerged there have been plenty of people ready to take them up and put them into use.74. The basic concept behind this work is far bigger than the Author has suggested.In its broadest concept the aim is to derive a system for indicating the cheapest mode of transport and the cheapest route that can be followed for connecting two points. Already this sort of technique is being applied to rail as well as to road. 75.The achievement so far is only part of the way. There is now a method of determining the most economical vertical alignment for a road project, and soon it will be possible to explore small ranges of horizontal and environmental alignment as well.76. The attempt in the Paper is to find minimum costs, and the method used is to minimize the total cost of transport. The Author has not referred to interaction between the road and the transport. He has considered entirely the road construction and maintenance costs. What does he consider is the importance of this interaction between road and road transport? A motorway costs about 51 million a mile to build and covers, say, 80 000 vehicles a day. That means in the first year the cost of operating transport on that road is about L3 million. At the other extreme, a two-lane road in a developing country in a mountainous area would cost about E l 0 0 000 a mile and it might be planned for 200 vehicles a day. In this case, in the first year the cost of operating transport on the road is no more than L8000. This comparison suggests that the interaction of costs is important.77. There are two main uses for this work. One is for the engineer in planning the execution of the work and the contractor in carrying it out and the other is for the planner to help in deciding which particular routes to follow and which particular transport scheme to adopt. As yet the use has been almost entirely in purely engineering aspects. What about the use in planning? Even in the UK there would be some pay off if there were more rapid methods for indicating the likely cost of roads on different alignments. How does the Author see the use of this system for indicating prel...
Highway engineers know only too little about the state of their roads, and the apparatus and methods described in the Paper for the routine assessment of their condition should be of the utmost value and have come at a very timely moment when closer attention than ever before is being directed to highway maintenance programmes.64. The Marshal1 Committee referred to the need for greater precision in forecasting maintenance requirements, and these can be obtained by the methods described by the Authors. My Department was no exception and we realized that the information in our possession about the strength and surface qualities of our trunk roads left something to be desired. This was quite evident from the adjustments which have to be made during the year to our annual maintenance programmes to deal with unexpected occurrences and occasional failures. For some years past we have employed the Benkelman beam to test for strength of pavements and the pendulum tester to measure skidding resistance. The Benkelman beam has proved a most useful tool and has enabled major maintenance works to be carried out in a most economical manner.65. Examples which come to mind: on the M1 it told us with reasonable accuracy the areas where foundations needed to be replaced. On the Stamford by-pass it told us of the thicknesses of overlay required to provide the necessary strength of pavement. Without the beam I think it very probable that in both these cases we would have overdesigned with considerable loss of economy. There is obviously a clear need for more apparatus of this kind. 66.The pendulum tester has, however, not been nearly so useful and, as the Authors point out, it needs considerable skill to interpret the results. The result of this has been that it has tended to be carefully locked away in various offices of the Department.67. Both machines suffer severe limitations in use. They are slow in operation and are difficult to use on high speed roads, as personnel obviously have to be protected adequately from traffic. Neither can be used without a great deal of advance preparation. Sufficient lessons have, however, been learned from these machines to make it clear that substantial improvements in the economy and efficiency of our maintenance programme might well be practicable if better apparatus can be made available. The development of the SCRIM and deflectograph machines which might do just that is, therefore, particularly welcome. We are, therefore, in process of setting up a unit called the Road Surface and Strength Testing Unit which will have the job of assessing the effectiveness of operation of these machines in normal operational usage and of establishing whether they will lead to improved standards of skidding resistance and pavement maintenance thereby permitting the more effective use of available funds. Initially, at any rate, the unit will be operating in our SouthEastern Division, and a provisional plan has been drawn up for its work during the coming summer. This unit will work in very close conjunction wi...
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