Yes, please! To me it feels like 90% of road works I pass actually has nobody there working at all. Some go on for years it seems.
Another option is what they do in Japan - just get 10X the number of people on it, with all the tools for the entire job and then do it all overnight.
Also, nice to see good old "dude with shovel" in there, a tool that would have looked the same back in the 19th century.
I love to see infrastructure jobs like this that don't interfere with people's daily lives. A similar feeling when I watch the Japanese build a subway in just 3 hours: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BYW4YYqG5A
Meanwhile, just down the road from me, we've had a major bridge closed since April of last year, and is due to reopen October 2024....
Videos like this should be a lesson to Civic planners everywhere.
When they first installed this contraption next to us, they messed up the incline. It was too steep so one of longer trailer trucks promptly got stuck on it ultimately doing just that - stopping all traffic on the highway. It was glorious.
Also, the speed limit on these bypasses is 60 km/h, so they are halving the bandwidth and create massive congestions during peak hours. Probably the reason they stopped using them recently and just close the highway for few hours at night instead.
In the UK, well England more than the rest of the UK, we have a system for reducing disruption on the roads during maintenance. We just let it go decades without any resurfacing.
We try to avoid Boston traffic by driving at night and then we run into... night construction! There's basically no time when traffic is reasonable around Boston. I'm pretty certain if they gave this equipment to the Mass DOT they'd figure out how to modify it to negate any benefit. /rant
Extremely cool video. Very cool technique as well. Two questions.
First, I'm guessing the cardboard boxes they filled with road material are for testing / QA of the blend?
Second, the "bridge" structure that allows traffic to keep flowing is very cool, but I'm assuming you have to stop traffic to get it into place to begin with. Seems unlikely they are moving that structure while traffic drives over it. Of course placing that structure should take much less time than the resurfacing process, but how much time? Minutes? Hours?
Beyond the bridge, the thing that has me stunned here is the precision and cleanliness of the job site. Being from the north east of USA, I am used to seeing road construction sites in permanent disarray - materials everywhere, rough interfaces between work site and untouched road, filthy machines, trucks, uniforms, and tool, etc. Is this just pristine because it's for a promo video or is this the norm in some places?
Geez, I hate having to watch Swiss infrastructure projects. Living in Zurich completely destroyed any residual respect for the way we build in America. Aside from this clever bridge, note how many and how extreme the differences are between what you see in this video and what you would witness watching an American repaving crew. They have a sufficient amount of labor on the job, compared to the 3 guys you would see on an American job. They all have uniform PPE, instead of jeans and t-shirts. Their equipment is clean and looks like it probably works. Site dumpers are appropriately scaled for the job. Bigger dump trucks are normal cabover trucks instead of insane brodozers. They actually use an sufficient quantity of binder, instead of skimping on it because American supervisors can't tell the difference. So many differences in culture.
I've seen this in Texas, notably on I-35 through Austin and on I-10 east out near the state line. In sequence, single-file, all the machines needed to do the job, from milling the surface at the front to laying down the new blacktop, rolling it, and IIRC painting it. Just creeping up the highway. Pilot vehicles at the front and back to close/open the lane.
Texas definitely throws money at the problem. Although lately they're optimizing their spend for larger checks to fewer contractors on bigger roads. Simplifies all the kickbacks I'm sure.
"Fascinating process. I wish they had a gift shop that could ship me a momento."
"Ja, natuerlich. Das Effizientestrassenerneuerungkasten."
Does anyone know how the full width of the carriageway gets surfaced in this setup? Perhaps lane closures on the left/right side (sequentially) after the centre portion has been resurfaced?
What're incentives for state to care about traffic? In my city they'd close road, do nothing for a month, then quickly patch in a few days and open road. They don't care about traffic jams and badly patched road requires repair every few years, which is a good thing for repair company, they always got a lot of work.
Theoretically I understand that bad traffic results in bad economy and less taxes, but in reality those things are so far away from each other to not make any influence.
I bet they cannot set up that bridge without "stopping traffic completely". It needs to be built or at least moved to the target spot, during that time, traffic needs to be stopped.
From a network engineer standpoint this sounds like false advertisement ;-) ("Your server can be moved to another rack non-disruptively. We just need to disconnect your network cable and connect it to another switch.")
But still, this is pretty cool
Very cool. Reminds me of this video I saw recently about the new subway being dug in Vancouver. There they build a temporary road surface above the underground work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4YFFtTEUQc&t=380s (I linked to the most relevant part, but the coolest part of this video is probably the machine that bores and reinforces the tunnel in one pass.)
Meanwhile has anyone here driven El Camino Real from Palo Alto south to Sunnyvale? One of the worst roads that continues to get worse for years now.
Is there a futures market where I can bet that this will not be utilized in the United States in the next 20 years?
Translated from one of the newest comments under the video:
"Thank you for the courage of the engineers and responsible authority not to give up despite the (failed) first attempt and to dare a second improved attempt."
In addition to the technical performance, there is an equally remarkable social performance.
I wish they showed the mobile bridge in motion.
The city planners here in Auburn should probably watch this.
They have a horrible habit of performing this kind of work during the worst possible times.
All of the college students will be gone for the summer and things will be nice and quiet. Then the students return and football season begins. Town becomes a mess. Then the City of Auburn start resurfacing roads or adding medians or additional lanes.
It's happened every year for the past 14 years that I've been a resident. It never fails. They always wait until school starts back before they begin any repairs.
Invented in Austria in 1999 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly-over
I remember something like this in Popular Mechanics magazine (or similar) back in the 70's or perhaps even earlier. It was one of their awesome "artist's concept" piece that depicted more of a proposal, or what we might call a pipe dream, ha ha.
I wish I could find the depiction — it was a ramp with cars passing over just like that (a lot shorter however) that would drive very slowly along, paving as it went.
I guess if you feel like you're not wasting enough money on roads this would certainly be a way to waste a lot more.
I can totally imagine a future version of this that slowly moves along the roadway and handles all the roadwork automatically.
I would bet that working in the daytime means fewer workplace accidents and increased job satisfaction from workers.
It is such a flat road and relatively straight. There are lots, but ultimately limited use cases, compared to where busy roads go out there in the real world.
I also think every one of those workers under that bridge should be wearing some type of respiratory filter for their long term health.
I'd love to see one of these on each end of the arterial 4-lane streets of Chicago. When spring hits, fire them up and go from one end to the other in either direction. Potholes become a thing of the past.
We're already used to overhead infrastructure with the L all over the city.
Amazing! Going further, I was recently wondering why we don’t just build two-layer (or higher) freeways in areas that have heavy congestion. “Express” lanes with fewer exits perhaps, to minimize transitions if that’s a problem.
This is incredibly smart.
Although the risk is that if the machine somehow gets damaged/malfunctions or if a car crashes into it, the setup can become more of a liability than a benefit.
Amazing! Thanks for sharing! This literally made my day. Triggered all sorts of happy dork in me. I had no idea this kind of construction was anything but pure sci-fi.
Very cool! But imagine having a rough day and accidentally running one of the heavy machines into the supporting pillar. It looks pretty tight under there.
Road-that-becomes-road has now joined bridge-truck-that-becomes-bridge on my list of awesome and recursive construction widgets.
Is it strong enough to have all types of vehicles driving over it? Or are heavy machinery and semi trucks told to exit?
This morning I noticed the train track at my station got a new bed, fully swapped out all stones and bars, over night.
Is it my imagination or does it look like some of that equipment must be specialized for such a small environment?
Does road work in the US ever approach the level of care and precision depicted in this video?
Seems kind of miserable to work under that bridge all day while trucks are driving over you?
I assumed it was very normal. But according to this comment section, it isnt. lol
Does the US road construction process follow the same meticulous precision?
Looks like 2 lanes -> 1.5 lanes, does speed change approaching ramp?
Does anyone know of any good reading material / papers on effective road maintenance and construction? Asphalt quality, longevity, cost, processes, success stories, etc. Cold weather climates would be a bonus.
Why can't we just build roads that last?
The American mind cannot comprehend…
(I know mine sure can’t)
Ok, this needs to be a thing everywhere.
If all that energy could go in something useful like improving trains that would be amazing. Us wanting it or not, cars are something from the past.
bangalore desperately needs this to fulfill BBMP's very frequent road-digging adventures.
Schaffe, Schaffe, highway baue?
That looks insanely expensive.
Very Swiss.
Precise, efficient, fast.
I would love to see that on this side of the pond, but I'm not holding my breath.
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There is some more detail on the bridge itself in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tpv6n1ykfA
The bridge is assembled over 2 nights at a motorway exit (so traffic can bypass it by driving off and immediately back on to the road). During night 1 the two end ramps are assembled and attached together to make a short bridge. During night 2 the ramps are driven apart, the central section is built to reach the full length and the entire structure is driven to the final location.
The entire length is 236 meters long providing a working length of 100 meters underneath. The assembled bridge can flex slightly at the joins between sections, and has a turning radius of 2 kilometers.