Photo: The Journalist
XVI International Forum of the Road Industry AVTODOREXPO was held in Kiev in November, and was attended by leading world experts. On the eve of the exhibition, The Journalist’s correspondent has interviewed Jim Walton, a representative of the American company Roadtec, one of the world leaders in the development of equipment for the construction and overhaul of roads. In Ukraine, Roadtec is represented by Trinity Group, the flagship in introducing modern technologies into the Ukrainian market.
During the interview, Jim Walton commented on the state of Ukrainian roads and spoke about technologies that can significantly improve the quality of road surface in Ukraine and optimize budgetary expenses for the construction and repair of roads.
– Is it your first visit to Ukraine Mr Walton, and what do you think of Ukrainian roads while driving on them?
– Oh no it’s not the first visit to Ukraine. It’s probably the fourth I think. One time I actually got a chance to drive from Kyiv. I was driven from Kyiv all the way to Dnipro, and the roads were absolutely horrible. They were at some places like riding a horse. With the speed of 45 km in hour was the way too fast. Cause it was a long time ago and I’m sure the road was improved nowadays.
– Do you see there are easier solutions for improving Ukrainian roads because Ukrainian Road seems to be a disaster for all of the population of Ukraine and this is a problem that Ukrainian struggling was for many years, many people are pretty disappointed on how the seas on the progress of the things our Government seems to do many steps of chooses, they try to do something, they put the Head of Ukravtodor, a foreign guy, they tried to implement new standards and your point of view is there is an easy solution of Ukrainian Road problem?
– Or let’s look at the Ukrainian road problem. First of you’ve got the weather against you. You have a + 40 – 40, or + 50 – 50 type of situation and if you dealing with asphalt or concrete or any road that is a disaster, because it goes it’s up and it’s down with these swings in temperature. So you can’t judge the Ukrainian road and you can’t compare them to the Western Europe roads – this is not the same, the weather is against you.
Secondly, you got behind after the fall of the Soviet Union and you didn’t get a chance to catch up. Roadways need to have constant maintenance, and so there is two great excuses for what happened to your roads. The real solution is the use of the latest in technology, they give you the longest possible service life, and the longest possible service life is available only if you correct the mix that is put down on the road.
Hot mix asphalt is like lava from a volcano, it is rock and sand mixed with a hot batuman that flows as a liquid and have + 150 degrees, but as it gets down towards 70-80 degrees it solidifies and stays solid at normal temperatures, that people have typically 35 or 36 degree in the summertime, in down to a -40 the asphalt should be a solid. In that process when it’s liquid and it’s delivered from the mixing plant, the first thing it goes into a truck or trailer and this motion itself deteriorate the mix. The mix segregates: that means that the big stones roll farther than the little stones. So in the middle of the truck you have the fines and on the outside of the truck you have the big stones and then as it goes down the road just checking up and down with normal movement of a truck it segregates further.
And as it goes further it also cools the outside of the trucks steel or cool the outside of the mix so that you have three things happening all at once: a thermal segregation, a material segregation and because it segregated it’s no longer the mix that was designed by the scientist who designed it.
So these three things or crucial to the longevity, but live the service life of an asphalt pavement.
– What technology did you bring into present in Ukraine and what impact did you get from the presentation of Ukravtodor, because as far as we’re concerned you have there to day.
– The solution for these three problems is to put everything back together again, and the way we do it is the machine that was invented in the United States. It’s called the Shuttle Buggy. It takes the material from the truck that is now segregated and thermally segregated it, so that it’s got cold spots. It’s got big stones sitting next to big stone and it remixes it in this area and it allows the material to go back into the mix design that it was originally made in the plant. And this mixed design is very crucial because someone in the laboratories with a lot of time making samples to make sure that they would last as best as possible. So now the new mixed design gets delivered to the paper and put on the runway. That can give you twice or more service life and a reduction of the maintenance, cause was much as 90% in certain areas of the world we’ve seen this image drive. If the service life of a road is doubled or tripled, then you can catch up in the Ukraine and to a large extent save a lot of the cost that with the taxpayer would be expected to fund by simply having the road not needing to be repaired so very often. And if you can save half of the cost by simply doubling the life of the road that’s a very great savings.
– And do you think the Ukrainian government has this understanding of the problem and is forced to do changes that’s needed to be done to fight this problem?
– Yes, the internal road network of unique country is a vital organ, so that people can trade from one area of the country to the other. It’s also a national defense questions so that you can defend yourselves quickly and carefully and it’s a safety tag. Smooth road not only saves lives by not being bumpy and having people try to miss a pothole in and go off the road, but they also is a great saving in petrol cost: the smoother road can reduce the petrol use considerably both in cars and in commercial vehicles.
– Do you have any partners in Ukraine now at the moment that would represent your company technologies on Ukrainian market?
– Yes, we have a company called the Trinity group, they doing a wonderful job of bringing us forward to the decision makers in Ukraine and it’s a great pleasure to work with them
We have this machines all over the world, they’ve improve the road systems in many-many different countries, and every time that we began it is always struggle to understand the technology, and understand how about spending a little extra money on the road construction process you can save a lot of money in the road program. But this is extremely important both for the safety of the people, for the driving safety and the economic viability have your country.
Jim Walton was also scheduled to meet with representatives of the Ukrainian authorities in Kiev to establish cooperation in the road construction industry.
As The Journalist reported, that a meeting with a leading American expert took place at Ukravtodor.
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