THURSDAY, APRIL 25, 2024
I have taken these pictures of the road surface of the Ponte Conde de Linhares (Ribandar causeway). I noticed that on March 9, an additional layer of tarmac has been added to a certain section. This will lead to destruction of this wonderful heritage structure from 1634, by adding layer over layer.
This was once the longest causeway in Asia and deserves utmost care. There is so much technology in the world for road surfacing that has not been put to use. In any case, the layers over layers are not doing anything positive to the structural integrity of the bridge but actually burdening it further. A cubic meter of average tarmac road surface weighs 2,300 kg (Internet data) and if you look at the pictures one can assume at least 15 centimetres of tarmac layers have been added over the years.
There are asphalt milling machines available that can skim off the layers of tarmac, which can be reused after adding barrels of melted bitumen and other necessary material.
From all the tonnes of material collected this way, there will be a huge amount left over to even prepare brand new roads.
There will be huge savings of bitumen, aggregate, carbon emissions from all the logistics involved.
The absurd drop-offs can be avoided if the road surface gets reduced and made flush with ground level and that way the Govt can avoid making death traps for road users. The concerned authorities need to find out the total tonnage added on the bridge that is actually unnecessary and highlight this to the public and government.
