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Maintaining ageing road infrastructure

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Via Bank

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There’s also the other end of the scale, there’s miles of very minor roads, which while they don’t cost the same to maintain as the high profile structures, still have a very low CBR. If they were railways they’d have been closed years ago.
Been driving around Cornwall the last two weeks and our sat-nav seems to delight in taking us down the most minor roads. All of these probably need a twice yearly hedge cutting (if you’ve been on a minor road in Cornwall you’ll know what I mean) even if the tarmac lasts for years. Surely there should be a rolling program of closure of the duplicate routes?

We could, and should, do what the Dutch do and close such duplicate routes to through traffic. Makes the surfacing last longer (because passing motorists' wheels aren't chewing it up) and makes them considerably more suitable for cycling when you're not going to encounter someone hooning around a blind corner following their sat-nav at 60mph.
 
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Lucan

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Tendons in post-stressed concrete can be withdrawn for periodic inspection and replaced if necessary. If the tendons, or groups of tendons, are anchored separately and they are present in redundant multiples, they can be withdrawn singly without closing the structure to traffic.
 

edwin_m

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Tendons in post-stressed concrete can be withdrawn for periodic inspection and replaced if necessary. If the tendons, or groups of tendons, are anchored separately and they are present in redundant multiples, they can be withdrawn singly without closing the structure to traffic.
But how many structures of the Sixties and Sevventies are post-stressed?

As I understand it normal reinforced concrete can suffer from rusting of the re-bar, but it's usually obvious from the external cracking and other signs. Expensive to fix but at least you get some warning that something needs to be done. The worst is pre-stressed concrete, because if it degrades to the extent that the concrete is no longer holding the reinforcement in tension then the structure is in danger of catastrophic collapse. I believe that was the reason the canopies at Derby station had a very substantial steel supporting scaffold added a few years before they were eventuallly replaced.
 
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