It’s a simple question with no doubt a very complicated answer...
We have many thousands of miles worth of motorways/dual carriageways etc in this country, with many of the concrete bridges/viaducts etc having been built in the past six or so decades, and we were probably in a heyday of road building from the late 1960s up to the early 1990s I guess?
I’ve been wondering recently though how long some of these structures can reasonably last?
Obviously there was the terrible bridge collapse in Genoa, Italy last year which shows how a flawed design and poor maintenance can cause a catastrophic failure:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponte_Morandi
That was an exceptional case obviously. However are we edging towards a time in perhaps thirty or forty years where a huge amount of the road networks infrastructure will need replacing as life expired?
I’m thinking of things like the elevated section of the M4 coming into London for instance.
I mean can you imagine the cost and disruption of replacing something like that?
I’m hoping some people on here might be knowledgeable on such things..?
We have many thousands of miles worth of motorways/dual carriageways etc in this country, with many of the concrete bridges/viaducts etc having been built in the past six or so decades, and we were probably in a heyday of road building from the late 1960s up to the early 1990s I guess?
I’ve been wondering recently though how long some of these structures can reasonably last?
Obviously there was the terrible bridge collapse in Genoa, Italy last year which shows how a flawed design and poor maintenance can cause a catastrophic failure:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponte_Morandi
That was an exceptional case obviously. However are we edging towards a time in perhaps thirty or forty years where a huge amount of the road networks infrastructure will need replacing as life expired?
I’m thinking of things like the elevated section of the M4 coming into London for instance.
I mean can you imagine the cost and disruption of replacing something like that?
I’m hoping some people on here might be knowledgeable on such things..?