Skip to main content

Newly constructed low-noise asphalt surface fails

Questions are being asked over the construction of a new section of the A1 autobahn in Germany. The highway stretch is being scrutinised due to surface failures and lies close to the city of Bremen but has been open for less than three months.
May 15, 2012 Read time: 1 min
Questions are being asked over the construction of a new section of the A1 autobahn in Germany.

The highway stretch is being scrutinised due to surface failures and lies close to the city of Bremen but has been open for less than three months.

The road carries around 70,000 vehicles/day and its construction was intended to reduce congestion between the port cities of Hamburg and Bremen. Numerous potholes are reported to have appeared in the surface of the highway. Given the recent severe weather, failures of older road surfaces are expected but these problems should not occur on links that have been so recently completed.

The investigations will focus on how water penetration into joints could have already caused the freeze-thaw process to break up the running surface or whether other problems such as material segregation or incorrect mix design could have been factors. The low-noise asphalt surface is crumbling at various points along the 73km section recently opened.

Related Content

  • The environmental case for geosynthetics
    August 8, 2022
    Huesker, a global manufacturer of geosynthetics and technical textiles, explains how incorporating geosynthetic material can boost a project’s environmental credentials*.
  • ERIC 2016: What shape the ‘Smart Road’?
    February 7, 2017
    Optimism about the future of highways worldwide abounded at the inaugural European Road Infrastructure Conference (ERIC) in Leeds, UK Around 500 delegates passed through the varied sessions during the three-day event at the Royal Armouries Museum in the northern English city of Leeds. They came away with many visions of what a motorway and road could look like. But what speakers at the event - co-organised by the Brussels-based European Union Road Federation (ERF) and the UK’s Road Safety Markings Ass
  • ERIC 2016: What shape the ‘Smart Road’?
    February 7, 2017
    Optimism about the future of highways worldwide abounded at the inaugural European Road Infrastructure Conference (ERIC) in Leeds, UK. Around 500 delegates passed through the varied sessions during the three-day event at the Royal Armouries Museum in the northern English city of Leeds. They came away with many visions of what a motorway and road could look like. But what speakers at the event - co-organised by the Brussels-based European Union Road Federation (ERF) and the UK’s Road Safety Markings Associat
  • Zipping up road lanes
    September 28, 2018
    QMB has a Lindsay Road Zipper on duty near Montreal. World Highways deputy editor David Arminas climbed aboard As vice president of Canadian barrier specialist QMB, based in Laval, Quebec, Marc-Andre Seguin is sanguine about the future for moveable barriers. On the one hand, it looks good. The oft-stated advantage of moveable barriers is that the systems are cheaper to install than adding a lane or two to a highway or bridge. Directional changes to lanes can boost volume on a road without disrupting tra