Concrete to cut road costs

Tien Phong

Trials of concrete roads have proved so successful that Vietnam’s first concrete highway will be built next year, according to a Construction Ministry official.

The 121 kilometer Ninh Binh – Thanh Hoa highway in northern Ninh Binh Province and central Thanh Hoa Province will be constructed from concrete, not the traditional road-building material, asphalt, said Nguyen Trung Hoa, head of the Ministry of Construction’s Science and Technology Department.

Concrete roads can be up to 10 percent cheaper to build than asphalt roads, Hoa said. However, constructing a road using concrete is more expensive if the ground is soft.

The main benefits of concrete roads center on maintenance. A concrete road can last for 40 years, compared to just nine years for an asphalt road.

Concrete roads are also cheaper to maintain than asphalt roads, Hoa said, and are more suitable in areas prone to flooding.

Even though Vietnam has had the capacity to build concrete roads for some time, only now can the nation’s cement production meet demand. The cost of building asphalt roads, which use a sticky form of petroleum, has also increased over the last decade as oil prices rose.

China, Thailand and several European countries use concrete to build highways and two-thirds of Austria’s streets are made from concrete.

Source: Tuoi Tre

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