American Amazed By Efficient Road Construction in Germany
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As a german I have to laugh a lot at this title hahaha
It's funny how Germany people think this is a joke when it's a real video filmed in Germany, but not in their area.
@@automation7295 It's not that people say the video is fake, it's just that this doesn't really happen on a large scale, and is just one example where it seems to have gone quickly, while in most other places it still takes months to do something like that. In total it just seems that Germany isn't really any better at this than Ian's state...
And I do not want to know how much time the bureaucracy or even the foundation of this road took before paving. At the same time there are over 4000 bridges in Germany that can't even be repaired anymore and instead have to be blown up and rebuilt completely. That is gonna take ages.
On top of that, city roads are often torn up and repaved multiple times in short amounts of time, because planning isn't able to repair different connections at the same time. I'm not saying it's always like that, but very often road construction is extremely frustrating in Germany...
@@automation7295 Living in Germany shows the situation as it is. I as example are living close to the A3 and now for several month the direction to the south is nothing but a construction side. Driving through the countryside is almost quicker than using the Autobahn.
But such a construction is way more complicated than just applying the top layer.
The construction started begin of 2020 and it is expected to end 21st of November 2025 but it would be a miracle if any public funded construction ends within the planned timewindow. And we are talking about 46 miles that are rebuild.
@@thomasfranz6467 100%!
@@thomasfranz6467 Road construction can be very extremely frustrating, but Germans also need to understand that tree roots can grow under the road and create bumps.
They can be fast in Germany, but the problem is it takes forever for them to start because of bureaucracy..... We have a broken bridge on our highway. They knew about the growing problem since 2015, but fixing the bridge was delayed by bureaucracy. End of 2021 the bridge was closed because of ruinous state, because they did not fix the existing problems. It took until June 2022 for a the permit to build a new bridge and blow the bridge up and only May 2023 the bridge was blown up. They say May 2026 we will have one direction usable again and end of 2027 both directions. Until the residents of the city suffer semi trucks and cars without end 24/7 through residential areas and permanent traffic jam..... They could have had build a provisional bridge years ago when it was known the bridge will be problem and avoid the chaos.... Companies in the region have now problems because not being able to get material and goods from and to their workplaces because of this chaos and trucks that do not need to stop in the region have still to make detours to avoid the traffic jams because of the broken bridge....
Three things are the problem. Maybe four. 1. Regulations 2. not enough bureaucrats cause they cut the jobs 3. Complaints by people who live there and file for cases in court 4. shortage of workforce.
No, that's wrong. Besides I have worked in an American owned (not anymore) international famous company in Gothenburg....and O'boy the bureaucracy was mad! Germany are heavy on the paperwork, that is true. But when things needs to be done quick, they can do that!
Is this the bridge in the A45 near Lüdenscheid? If so, i know the traffic problems over there...
@@berthiltanke8377yes, I think that's it. OPs description sounds exactly like the Rahmedetalbrücke ( A45 near Lüdenscheid)
they get fixed now because of the war we prepairing for 10years , but they wont be as good as new after the military caravan used it
It's not the asphalt that takes a long time. It is the foundation that takes time.
That is real.
Typically asfalt is swiched out every 20 years and the road bed every 40. But sometimes if the bed is decent they can just cut deaper and do a 3rd 20 year period with now asfalt.
Of cause redoing the road bed is not that hard if its a gravel bed. There is specialy machines that doe it in one pass.
That is when there is a concrete bed that is a problem and they do have a lot of those in germany. They supose to last longer but really dont.
True, but they still did an incredible job.
When the A10 was down from 3 lanes to one, i feared they would take at least three month.
And i took the less than one
for ripping the old asphalt out put down new bedding and then resurfacing it.
If i rember all in all they took about 3 to 4 weaks.
It´s not the asphalt that takes a long time. Its the government and the planning that takes time.
plus the planning upfront which nobody sees...
Hey Ian. So I'm a Dutch man living in Germany for about 15 years now. I myself have worked in road construction for 9 years. So I know a bit. In Germany, it takes really long to get road construction done. In comparison to the Netherlands. The biggest challenges in Germany are safety regulations, authorisation and money.
In the Netherlands we get the constructions done faster and better. But therefore we pay a hell of lot more on taxes for smooth roads and quick fixes.
We have some really great roads in England that have lasted centuries.
We didn't build them though, the Romans did😂
or was it the Ancients?
This reminds me of a story when I was on vacation in Pula/Croatia. When we visited the amphitheater in Pula, we came to the catacombs. The guide knocked on an old wall and said: "Roman approx. 2000 years old", at the next wall he also knocked on it and the plaster trickled down and said: "Italian (from the occupation in WW2) approx. 80 years old"
😂😂😂
@@onnasenshi7739 But but,the Romans were also Italians......😮😮😮
@@jooproos6559 With one small difference, there are 2000 years in between.
Doing the striping by hand isn't common in germany. I think they do it here by hand because of the fresh asphalt that is still soft and vehicles would leave tracks in it.
Traffic engineer here... You can do the paint by hand directly behind the (also slow) construction vehicles as shown in the video. this would be just white paint markings to allow traffic shortly after construction (Verkehrsfreigabe). The real (long lasting) marking are applied later (usually weeks) by trucks or other tools and consist of eighter some sort of plastic or other some mm thick and durable material (like multi components markings). those are also reflective which you cant accomplish with just white paint.
Dear Ian,
one thing I have learned is that ... AMERICANS DONT LIKE TO LEARN FROM OTHER COUNTRIES ... which is part of the "we are the greatest nation in the world" ARROGANCE!
OK...listen: As a german (or european in general) I find your behavior beyond embrassing. This channel mostly is so successful because europeans like to feel good about themselves, like their ego getting stroked by an american. And then you have nothing bette to do then make these embrassing comments where you come off as the most pretentious and arrogant prick, making generalizing comments about americans. Its so indignifying....zum fremdschämen.
And yet Americans go on saying "I wish it's done like this here" or "I wish we have those here" when they see something, despite the fact they don't like to learn from other countries.
I hate to say this, being born and raised in America... I feel like I have always been living in the wrong country... For the obvious reasons, that have been stated by both above comment and reply
@@jok3r906 If you feel like you have always been living in the wrong country, what country or continent do you wish you lived in?
This just fuels the "stupid stuff Americans say", some of your fellow citizens actually act and think like the USA are the only industrial nation of the earth.
Thankfully we in the rest of the world know it's not most of the US population, just those we notice are out of the ordinary and therefore are made into a stereotype, because their behaviors of this subset are so easy to remember.
hahah the titel is just to funny for me as a german. listen this is NOT normal in germany
Dass ist schon normal, man sieht es nur selten.
I fully agree. We have road construction sites in Germany that take years to complete. This is due to a lot of bureaucracy, a lack of skilled workers and highly distributed responsibilities. And of course it's a question of money.
11:15 The guy does not do the permanent markings. They did a thin chalk line marking that's easy to remove and he use a better visible paint that can handle a bit rain and is easier to see for the guys on the machines that do the permanent markings. The permanent marking is not paint, it's a plastic material that has small glass pieces inside that reflects the car lights for better visibility. Reflective paint is only used in areas with low traffic.
you see them walking with the final mashine. first the chalkline, then the final blocklines. both seen in this video.
You should take a look at the ASTRA-Bridge.
It's a mobile bridge made for the Swiss government, where the traffic can drive over the construction site on two lanes.
Ones the section is done below the bridge, you move it to the next section.
To understand this solution, you need to know that we basically have 2 main highways. From Geneva to Chur (West to East) and from Basel to Chiasso (North to South). There are no substitute highways in those directions. If you have to reroute traffic, it's all through the villages. So you either create a huge traffic jam on one side, a slightly less huge one on both sides or you build a bridge to minimalise trafic jam.
I can well remember the A2 towards Hannover before the year 2000, in which the Expo was held there. Then the A2 was extended continously to 6 lanes - on a 100km stretch between Hannover and Bielefeld. And that took 7 or 8 years of road work! And traffic jams.
The most annoying part in road works in Germany is, if they close off lanes with cones for weeks or even month, but you never see a single soul working there. They are just closed and nothing happens. Thats why I have my problem putting German road contruction and efficiency into one sentence.
mein Gott Leute.. denkt doch mal ein bisschen nach. Jeder 3. Kommentar kommt mit solche Äpfel-Birnen-Vergleichen! Hier wird der Straßenbelag einer bestehenden Straße erneuert. Und ihr redet dauernd von irgendwelchen neu zu bauenden Straßen. Das ist ja wohl ein km-weiter Unterschied. Ist doch eigentlich nicht so schwer zu begreifen!
@@pok81Selbst das hab ich hier noch nie so effizient erlebt. In der Regel wird der alte Strassenbelag abgetragen, dann passiert ewig nichts, bis dann irgendwann mal jemand den neuen Belag macht.
@@Flo-vn9ty Liegt aber meistens an der Stückelung der Gewerke. Da wird ein Sub'ler mit dem Schreddern des Alt-Belags beauftragt und ein anderer mit dem Neu-Asphaltieren. Wenn nun SubA länger braucht, hat SubB eventuell gerade keine Kapazitäten frei und macht das dann später fertig. Die Lösung wäre, die Stückelung zu unterbinden. Da das aber wieder in die Kosten geht, macht das kaum wer, außer es gibt genug Druck von außen.
@@Flamebeard0815vieles sind auch ausschreibungen und der Auftraggeber (Bund oder land nehme ich mal an) ist quasi gezwungen das günstigste zu nehmen und günstig hat nicht viel mit Effizienz zu tun.
Ich geh mal davon aus das bei der A8(?) die Bedingungen in der Ausschreibung genau auf "alles an einem Tag" ausgerichtet waren und daher wurde es so gemacht, hat sicher deutlich mehr gekostet.
The problems are mostly regulations, tests and foundations. Autobahn foundations are always done with concrete mixed into the ground. This mixture has to dry for weeks. So they have can do nothing in this time. They also have to drill into the road to get samples for tests etc.
The Vögele machines are produced about 3 miles from where I live. I pass the factory several times a week.
The striping by hand may be due to the tarmac being so fresh. The machines are likely too heavy and would demolish the still-fresh tarmac. Btw: A big share of the color used for road/street markings is produced by the company Raschig which is about 5 miles from where I live.
The construction of US interstates and the German Autobahn is very different. I once saw a video that explained the differences (e.g. the under-construction of the German Autobahn is about double the size of US interstates). Maintenance is crucial. A regular schedule ("Streckenkontrolle") of the Autobahnmeisterei drives along the Autobahn and looks for cracks or other damage. Small damage is repaired on the spot, and medium or large damage is reported to the maintenance crew and repaired within days. Additionally, every Autobahn is audited every 4 years and decided whether to remove the complete construction (every 20 to 50 years), to only remove the surface (2nd clip) and administer new tarmac or concrete (every 11-16 years), or just put on a new thin layer of tarmac on rough patches to smooth the surface. The first option takes months to years and has to be planned thoroughly. The second option takes weeks to months. The last option is an affair of a few days.
I think you should check how streets and intersections are built in the Netherlands - especially local streets are built out of brick, so it's like a giant lego set. When they do (smaller) utility work, they just pull up a part of the brick, do a bit of digging, then same day they put the same brick back down and tamp it. Curb sections are all pre-cast and assembled onsite. The same bricks last decades, so sometimes when a street becomes uneven, they just pull up all the brick, reset the foundation, and then lay most of the same brick back down. There's of course longer projects, but when they installed fiber in our neighborhood the wholel process took like 6 hours.
near my hometown they built a new bicycle bridge within 2 hours over a 14 lane highway in Eindhoven. a little further on that same stretch of highway they built a tunnel under the highway without closing it.
Love Eindhoven - used to go the evulon as a kid (40 years ago).
#1 is the time for JUST THE SURFACE LAYER ... before you can do this you have to prepare the underbed with gravel, possibly put in stones on the side to curb the flow of water, add drainage points, ... you know ... DOING IT PROPERLY.
The biggest amount of time is probably spent on removing the old road surface, so constructions do take more than "just a few days".
I don't know about Germany but where I'm at they have machines that remove the road surface. And those are pretty quick, they could probably keep up with the pavers.
Typically road works run on a 20/40 year shedual. That is replace the surface layer every 20 years and the bed every 40 years.
The machine that removes the asfalt is just as fast as the one laying it. In some large prject they can even use the return trucks to truck the old asfalt away. We even got mobile plants thst reprocess the assfalt localy so the truxmcks just need tl drive a few km
For the bed they need to reprocess thst to. But there is.a machine to reprocress the beed in only one go.
A highwsy bed is only 1 meter thick, compare to a railwsy bed that is typically 2.5 meter deep. So thst reprocessing is pretty simple.
Anything below 1 meter is sub surface and that is never reprocessed.
Germans gets shit done living close to the German border i see it often and we have alot of Germans on holiday up here in Denmark they are always polite friendly people 😊
Germans gets things done, but it takes a shitload of time. Everytime I drove in the north of Germany , there were stretches of kilometres long half the lanes (1 lane) due to construction. In NL the construction gets done in shorter time, with less mportunity...
Germany still have to repair a railway bridge over a river, which got damaged 8 years ago. it is still not finished. (back in the 1930 the bridge was built in 2 years...)
@@lws7394 remember i live in Denmark were nothing gets done road wise😄
@@lws7394 Usually the entire motorway is not closed, as rush hour traffic often has to continue flowing (including traffic jams ;) ) and when the road is completely closed the other roads are overcrowded.
Extended time until a project is started and completed -> often arises from citizens' initiatives that are against the project in one form or another; contract awarding and tendering obligations, which on the one hand have to be compared and then during the construction phase it turns out that the company chosen a) has not taken all possible material costs into account and/or b) cannot work properly with the additional companies :) .
@@thomaspagh8988 Nothing? do you sometimes get out of your house?
Are you aware that Denmark has the most kilometers of highway per capita in Europe and then you say that nothing has been done?
@@Ikkeligeglad it depends on were you are living in Denmark some places nothing is getting done
Compare this to the Netherlands and Germany will look as slow as a snail...
Yeah but some of these newer things we might be able to import in the Netherlands as well. There is always room for improvement although i do think we are sort of reaching the limmits of that.
tell that to the crew working on the A7 ( afsluitdijk ) should be ready in 2022.... euh 2023... euh 2025 it now says....
The Netherlands are flat, essentially. Could probably pave the entire country in a month.
Just 1 guy too. 😂
It's funny that people hate constructions, yet they still want smooth roads with no potholes and cracks. I swear all drivers are just impatient and ungrateful.
Impatient drivers should have their license revoked. Good thing I don't drive, I hate motorway drivers.
Dutch roads are pretty smooth indeed. When coing from Belgium, I always sigh with relief. Big difference.
I believe the Striping Machine can't drive on the fresh Street the Surfaces is too soft it needs a couple of hours! We have amazing Road painting machinery!
I've watched quite a few of your videos over the past few weeks, which is quite remarkable considering I'm not American (but European) and not even particularly interested in cars or construction... But your enthusiasm is simply contagious. Thank you!
We do that in Sweden too. Not this machine. But we put 4 lanes at once. There will be better roads without joints that crack.
Here in Finland it's usually done one lane at a time during the night.
@@oskar6747 It was like this in Sweden too. This is new. It had been done for a couple of years.
@@bengtolsson5436 Been driving down the E6 every holiday since the late eighties, its amazing how everything changed! Especially around the Norwegen border with the new bridge and everything! awesome people and county, i hope i get to visit many more years!
Hi Ian, I'm not from Germany, but from the NL and live in California for almost 3 decades. I know the difference too. Just imagine if the autobahn wasn't smooth, would the "no speed limit" on certain stretches even be safe? Of course not. You know that too. My Toyota (manual transmission of course) was limited to 200 kph (125 mph). Good times.. This is just a comment to the uneven roads, potholes, etc. that we find in the US and take a long time to be repaired.
The lines are applied by hand because the asphalt cannot be subjected to any load at that time and must rest until it has achieved full strength.
Normal motorway construction site:
12 heavy machines and countless construction workers in motion, normal traffic again after 3km.
German Autobahn construction site:
20km of narrowed road, an excavator has been standing there motionless for 2 weeks, 3 construction workers drinking coffee and watching the traffic jam.
The actual construction and construction work is good in Germany, but the bureaucratic civil war before and during the construction work is absolute madness. The planning and approval of larger construction projects sometimes takes up to 25 years! This is also why a large part of the German transport infrastructure is totally outdated, overloaded and in very poor condition. If you want to experience good infrastructure and its amazingly fast construction, then you should look at the Netherlands.
Hi, i'd like to share some background information on road construction as i worked for 25 years at a road construction company in Switzerland.
First of all most of the movies you showed are all resurfacing of asphalt roads, especially the top wear level which is only about 3 to 5 inches thick.
The asphalt/tarmac has a temperature of 120 to 180 Centigrade (250 to 350 ° F) when put to the floor. There is a certain time to cool down before you can drive on it without deforming/damaging it. So, 24 hours is about the limit (without artificialy cooling with water) for the whole process, including milling off the old surface, suction cleaning, spraying tar as a binder, paving the asphalt, cool down and painting/glueing the road markings...
Secondly; This fast procedure works only if the foundation is ok/stable. In Switzerland roads have usually 3 layers - gravel/asphalt bearing layer/asphalt top layer. The gravel gives the road it's stability. If you can't achieve the desired stability you may use rocks or concrete (reinforced). The load bearing asphalt evenly spreads the load from the cars and trucks. Is the gravel layer weak the load bearing asphalt will crack and you will see deformation on the surface.
Third; If you have to replace the load bearing asphalt it will take quite a while to cool down this layer as it is approximately 1.5 to 2 feet thick and needs to be cool before you lay the top layer.
Fourth; If you have to redo the gravel layer there is mostly another problem lurking, like weak spots in the ground below, like drainage system, sewer pipes, elecrical lines or comm lines to replace or install...
Fith; If you use concrete instead of asphalt there is a considerable curing time needed.
Sixth; Mostly you have to wait on a state official service to do their job before you can do your's (in a hurry)...
As you might see by now there are some reasons why road projects might take so long
I live in the Netherlands and they just finished re-surfacing the most important 4 lane highway over a 25km (16 miles) stretch, in about 4 week's time. They staggered the work into split sections 2 lanes wide, to allow traffic to continue with the least amount of hassle.
Our guys are better at painting by hand, but if the commenter did more research they would know that there is no need for machines in this phase. For the next painting, machines will be used for efficiency! Otherwise, you can easily compare the quality of German and American highways!
Here in Finland they just repaved about 10km (6,2 miles) stretch of the local country road near where I live. The pavement work took about two weeks (two layers of asphalt) and the road markings were painted about one week later.
We work the same in The Netherlands ( as in Deutschland).
Nee, dat doen we gelukkig niet !! In Nederland gaan de werkzaamheden veel sneller en er word meer rekening gehouden met verkeers drukte ! Zo heb ik eens in Duitsland in een file gestaan van 18 kilometer, omdat ze het daar nodig vonden om tijdens de spits de tijdelijke gele strepen weg te halen ! Ik ben vrachtwagen chauffeur, en ben naar mijn smaak te vaak in Duitsland. Dus ik denk wel dat ik weet waar ik over spreek ?!
Only the Dutch are faster, they work day and night!!🤬
no way. we do a stretch of 6Km in a weekend. In gemany it wil take 6 weeks
On the "road marking on foot" ... americans are not used to walking a few kilometers ...
"What are kilometers?" The will answer
@@marco_grt4460 Google: What percentage of the world uses miles?
This process began in France during the 1790s, and has persistently advanced over two centuries, accumulating into 95% of the world officially only using the modern metric system.
Even though the device is very fast, roads in the USA are reopened much faster. That is an experience I had. Nowhere else in the world are roads closed for as long as in Germany
In Australia we don’t bother fixing the roads most the time, they just put up ‘rough surface’ signs… so they’ll tell you they know about it but they’re not in a rush to fix it!
Probably the reason the lines are done by "hand" is because the asphalt so fresh, is that line marking trucks are so weighty that it would damage the new surface.
The way you describe your road construction crews makes it sound like American & New Zealand road crews trained at the same place! You know when those road cones go out they're not just going to be there overnight!
The normal thing I see on the german Autobahn is that one lane is closed. The strip that is closed is about 10km long. After it's closed it takes about 4 days until the first workers appear to walk around, mark everything, then it takes another 2-3 days until the first machines arrive. Then on about 2km they use some kind of angle grinder to open up the asphalt. The next day the next 2km and so on. Then an excavator comes to take everything away for another day. Then it's too wet or too hot or too April or too ... whatever to repair anything. And then after a few weeks somebody gets there and pours in new asphalt. Then everything dries and after about 2 months you have repairs ready on a small portion of the road. And after about a week or so somebody realizes: "Dude where are our beacons and speed limit signs?" "Damn they're still on the A29... you think we should go and get them?" "Nah we're good, we got plenty."
There is a video where a dutch highway is dug up, a bridge and an underpas is constructed and the highway is resurfaced again within a weekend. Friday night the road was closed and it was completed and open again monday morning 7 am for rush hour..
We are so fast at the construction because we have no Speedlimit😂
The photo serves as proof of work, so that you can prove. That the sewer is clean and not blocked
Seeing this as a german feels like a joke. This video seems like a super rare exception. Public construction projects usually take forever over here. We have an Autobahn project near where I live that are that has been under construction for over 15 years and is not even close to being finished. A lot of that has to do with bureaucracy and insanely long approval processes but also the actual build takes a long time. The reasons for this are plentyful. I'm always impressed when I see actual things happening at raodside contruction sites in foreign countries.
So you can't see a difference in renewing a strip of road and building a complete fresh one with thousands of landowner issues? Think about it.
@@pok81 I see the difference, but both can take pretty long around here.
efficient road construction Germany are 4 words I didn't expect to be combined in one sentence these days.
dont get too emotional. Germany is the same as any other country. you get what you pay for. It can be done, someone just has to pay it. And usually, the lowest bidder wins and lowest is the slowest.
the difference is that in the USA they don't use paint
that used to happen in Germany too (in the 90s) but they don't do it anymore because it's no longer visible after 2 years
here it's a kind of adhesive tape with glass beads that is baked onto the asphalt, lasts much longer and is much more visible in the dark
in the area where I live, they renewed an exit, renewed the street and renewed a bridge all at the same time in one contruction site. they first changed the course of the street to keep the traffic flowing, so there is no road closed, just slowed down that traffic passes the construction site slowly.
I think you would dig that :D
As a german I can tell you that our roads and bridges are in very bad condition and the road works really don´t happen fast. Actually they happen very slow. The danish guys are lighting fast compared to it. They start peeling off the surface of the road in the morning, give it a new foundation until early afternoon and put a new surface on it in the late afternoon of the same day. I guess this is a PR-video of Vögele.
The Autobahn bridges in our area are being rebuilt. That will take years.
Lucky when two bridges stand next to each other. Then a third one is built next to it. The old bridge in the middle is blown up. The new bridge was pushed into the place of the old one. Then the second old bridge will be blown up and rebuilt.
The traffic then always has to squeeze over one bridge until everything is finished.
Same here. A overpass bridge was build in the 50th. Around 2008 they detected cracks and put supports under it wich reduced the road with unter the bridge and they had to reduce the speed down to 30 under and 60 over the bridge. That stayed this way for 7 years. They then build a temporary overpass beside the old one and waited another 3 years before breaking down the old bridge and building a new one. That took another 5 years. So over all it took 15 years from the detection of the damage to the new overpass bridge.
And now they're taking about redoing it to add another lane.
I can only agree to what others already said: This is not how we do things usually here in Germany. Most construction takes ages. And since they always hire the cheapest contractor, there is a lot of infrastructure built which does not last. We had a few tunnels built here and shortly after they were finished, they had to be repaired because water was leaking in. We also had a rebuild of a part of the Autobahn and only month after they finished, they had to redo it because the asphalt already started cracking. Oh and they are building a huge bridge in my town. Originally it should get two lanes for each direction. But after they erected the pylons they noticed they are too weak. So they had to cut one lane.
And don't get me started on planning. They always build these things incrementally. In my region I know of two major roads that they build to connect to the Autobahn. The first one ends in a field in the middle of nowhere, only connected to a small rural road a few kilometers before the Autobahn. And it is in this state since at least 20 (yes, twenty) years. The other road had been built in two parts, with one part missing in between and one part missing that connects to the Autobahn. The latter has been completed last year and now they have started constructing the missing ~ 10 km in between. The signs say they want to finish 2027.. We'll see... But the whole construction time of this maybe 35 km long road is also at least 15 - 20 years by then.
So you see... We in Germany also only cook with water (that's a famous German saying, I guess you get the point).
Roadconstruction in Germany? Well, I do not know about German labour laws? And its not perfect in the Netherlands.. But here whe try to roadconstruction at night when whe can.. All in all, nothing wrong with roads in Germany, but sometimes I'm like: And how does this make sence?🤷♂
They pave a 3 lane wide highway in one pass . The asphalt upper layer has a porous struction to let water flow to the sides of the road .
As a Dutchman, Hahahahaha this title. German roadworks are a joke. Oberhausen straight had been Baustelle for a decade now
As a german i experienced true efficiency in denmark where i work. They just fix a section of the highway over night without much sweat and not much lasting blockings.
At the start of day Danes re-open broken highways and put it on 80 limit. One Night of breaking it up, One Day of blocking a lane to put fresh asphalt on and over the next Day its done.
Day after that, free to go. Boom.
Germany on the other hand is such a mess on highways (no speed limit btw). Placing signs up to 5 kilometers ahead both sides and just fckin cucks a lane (edit: or multiple lanes like you said)
FOR YEARS.
It is AWFUL
Ian , the motorways in France and Germany are amazing , there like driving on a billiard table . 🇬🇧
In Victoria, Aus there are only two roads that have tolls, because they're technically owned and operated by private companies for a given number of years (50 I think) to cover there costs of maintaining them, the rest of the roads are maintained by the government, at different levels, local roads by councils, major roads by state and the interstate roads jointly between state and federal, usually covered by registration charges and a portion of taxes
well, sometimes even germany can be fast. this was fast done but i believe the planning of this took month.
You didn't even check out the system they have over there of the utilities. They run all the utilities underneath the cycle paths/pavements (sidewalks for you). Then when you get a broken pipe or whatever, they pull up the herringbone blocks of the path and service the utils without needing to shut the road. Check it out - so much better than the old services running underneath the road we that have in this country (UK)
The Road laying pert is the last step in Autobahn renovation and it is probably the fastest part of it as shown in the video. The preparation to get to that part is taking months, which is what we in Germany experience and which is not shown in the video. Most Autobahn enhancements like adding a lane take 6 month to 2 years.
As a German i wonder which Germany you looked at .... building sites take AGES in Germany ... well maybe not the construction but the planning and the government does. Every little detail gets talked to death in 15-20 meetings and nothing gets done.
On the first video: That's just the resurfacing step. If they redo a strip of the Autobahn, it's common that they dig up/blast the underlying structures that give the road stability, the so-called 'Unterbau'. The rebuilding of this part of the construction is what takes most of the time, as some layers have to rest to get settled evenly (which cannot be done properly on a large scale with machinery as of now).
Now I suggest seeing European animal crossings on highways so that they can safely cross the other side of the road. This also significantly improves the safety of drivers and car passengers by minimizing the risk of an accident
The reason it takes so long in America and Australia is the traffic flow takes priority over construction. Here they have closed the road to traffic
In my area i see increased work on roads for a couple of years now. Different methods and different times to finish.
1.The easiest level is the road service. They come with a bucket of cold asphalt, stomp it in the hole and thats it.
2. Road inspection by a vehicle with camera and laser and stuff to evaluate the status of the road. Work starts 2 years after.
3. they fix a rectangular part of a road on one or both sides. maybe 2m long maybe 100m long. Digging out the surface for an inch or four and fill it again with road roller. Takes from hours to few days. I have seen a crossroad made new in two days.
4. fixing a ring road of a city. renew the whole surface for lots of heavy traffic and many trucks a day. Can take weeks.
5. bridges on the ring road. took months to finish those.
6. new surface plus new traffic island and bus stops in a village took months.
The fixes from point 3 down are very good. driving over does not feel like a change in surface, no kick in the butt whatsoever. Just a change in color.
For all ppl here the pavement is really that fast but all the work that takes so much time is done before thats why its takes months even in germany to build roads.
As a Dane going through Germany on the Autobahn a few times each summer, efficient isn't the word that springs to mind when I think about German road construction. to me it seems like they insists on cramming as much road construction and repairs in, in the 4 or 5 weeks in the summer where people from all parts of Europe drive through Germany, as possible. They tend to block of 1 of 2 lanes for 10 km, and then just work on 100 m of that entire stretch.
The construction zones here in Germany take their sweet time… most of the time you don’t even see anybody working.
That clip is the final asphalt work, which is most efficient in one go and is rather quick. But usually construction zones take months to years, depending on what to do
I think the main problem in USA is that the highway was designed for a certain number of cars and especially trucks with certain weight. The traffic now is much higher than when the roads were designed. It would require a whole reconstruction of the highway from base gravel up and horrendous amounts of dollars to do it right. and they dont have that money at hand. So they do continuous work with only few money and the traffic somehow keeps going while with real new construction the whole thing needs to be shut down.
When I lived in Shenzhen they destroyed an intersection of 4 lanes each way and re-configured it over a weekend and we used it on Monday morning.
If you want to see efficient road construction, go to the Netherlands, those dudes are on another level. Germany makes good roads, but at a cost and it takes a damn long time.
As far as I know: In Germany it's not allowed to spray Bitumen like the US-Trucks did in the Clip. Bitumen is very slippery, there were several (deadly) Accidents in the past Decades, especially with 1-Lane-Vehicles like Motorcycles. If a Road has too large Repair-Spots with Bitumen you can sue the County the Place belongs to and have the Law at your Side in the most Cases...
drive with your paint truck over a fresh layer asphalt and you see why it´s made by hand
F150s are rare in Germany as they are in the Netherlands, they are used in cases where a Truck is needed, but a car can be afforded.
To use them as a normal civilian is often frowned upon as they are not appreciated in the road view.
Vögele Asphalt Machines are great. I think they come from Mannheim.
A major road near me still has a temporary bridge installed in 1968.
I'm very amazed by this video, because (as far as I known) Germany can easily close off 2 main highways in the same direction for over a year, without worrying about how people are supposed to get to work (or more important how the Dutch are supposed to drag their caravans across Germany using the left lane ;-) )
In the Netherlands we build larger stretches of road during weekend closures. On Fridays you travel on an old road, and on Monday they have resurfaced a 10-mile stretch.
no its Winter, Spring, Summer, Autmn & Carnival season🎉
11:07 they do it by hand because the asphalt isnt in its final hard conditions. its still like "drying" or cooling and cant take high load. so do it by hand on your feet is the best way to do it.
A few weeks ago the swiss army practiced to land their jets on the autobahn and it was live on TV. It’s paid by taxes, so it has to 😂 they talked a lot about the construction quality of the highway and how easy it was to disassemble 😱
Now, I can tell you about Russian road construction: A truck throws gravel on the soil, a bullozer spreads it out, another truck throws asphalt on top, another bulldozwer spreads it then the steam roller drives on it once or twice. Done. No compaction, no grading, no replacing the soil by gravel, no drainage. Why is that? Because in wintert there is water under the asphalt, it freezes and then cracks the whole street. Next spring you make a new road just the same way.
He "Efficient German Road Construction"
Me as a German: "What ?!?"
But as annoyed we may get with all the roadworks everywhere, many people really underestimate what goes into building a road that will last some time. Especially if the road has to be completely redone, and not just resurfacing.
There was some neglect and now they have a hard time to keep up with many sites at ones beyond the point where repair would have been easier.
Also, there is a difference in what kind of material is used. Asphalt is easier, quicker and cheaper to do, which is what you find here most often, but not as durable with a lot of large trucks as concrete. Concrete due to curing times and preparation takes a little longer. You will find that used on the Autobahn in sections where you expect a lot of very heavy trucks going, as the increased durability pays of.
Also a comment to the short video from the US, that kind of resurfacing is not even done here.
They are spraying some liquid asphalt or tar (we call that stuff Bitumen) and from what I know, some sort of sand or rather fine aggregate is just spread on top as it would otherwise be too slippery. That is more like repainting the road, not like resurfacing.
Resurfacing here really shaves of the top about 5 to 10 cm (somehwere around 2 to 4 inches) and puts on a new layer of prepared concrete with the aggregate mixed in allready, the liquid tar is prayed on before only to promote better adhesion.
underneath that surface you would find another thicker layer of asphalt, which is the actualy load bearing layer, that is put on top of the prepared underground.
The manhole cover, that really can be done within 3 hours and half a day, depending on how much they have to replace. If the walls are cracked or brocken, they may have to remove more and it may take longer.
The part with the phone is someone you will find quite often lately, they take some pictures at the end, to increase speed and documentation for a sign off that the work was done and in what we could see, no debris was dropped into the sewer during the process (thats what this rubber sleve and the locked in plate were fore, preventing debris going down.)
One summer and 1 winter and the road is so what from damaged that every week they need to repair it, So it's 10 years under construction. Take Dutch road construction that's how its properly done.
always a pleasure Ian. unfortunately south africa also uses the tar machines from voegele & wirtgen. but since it got bought by john deer I was hoping you guys would also get some cool road tech. in south africa it depends on the ruling province, if your roads are good or the municipality is broke but there are many lambo's driving around.
in germany most of the parts from the Autobahn financed by goverment an it cost a lot of time to rebuild, but other parts goes to private companies and to fix this streets is so much faster, its a kind of prepayment from these companies-they get the money back from the goverment with a bonus
Highway or interstate takes forever in germany too. You often see nobody working but there might be people in trenches besides the road.
Making a new surface is not the problem. The time consuming part is the preparation of the ground when it needs a real refurbishment.
Have a look at the thickness they're placing down, which plays a huge part in the durability of the roads.
Not the hot bitumen / asphalt spreading tanker trucks that were shown from the US.
I've seen the difference between regular Norwegian roadworks and what was required in the Ormen Lange Gas Terminal.
Regular road refurbishing lay down 1-2 inches and new roads 2-3 inches, while the roads on the gas terminal had over 4 inches on top of the very deep gravel foundation they made there, I measured some places close to 15 cm, so almost 6 inches, in some spots.
The gas plant roads were made to support 500 tons module and the equipment needed to move them, without requiring maintenance afterward.
It looked to me, who isn't trained in roadworks, that they used the final layer to even out every imperfections of the other layers, rather than putting down an agreed upon minimum thickness and as little as possible over that.
Oh I remember well the second site here. It was really hot that day and they've had massive probs to get water at the site for cooling the tires and the glue-layer coz the water trucks get stuck in traffic jams on the diversion routes. But they were able to open the new road faster than planned :)
Don't worry about you saying "highway". It's the correct English translation. When we speak English we call it highway too most of the time.
One of the Swiss highways (A13) was washed out after heavy rain last weekend and single lane traffic was possible after less than a week.
5:50 re-sealing roads is done everywhere.
A few years after the surface is layed, they will tar to seal and chip it for a new wear surface in order to extend the life of the road by preventing water ingress.
Usually see them done every 2-5 years depending on the condition (or how rural). Eventually though the surface will start to disintegrate and will need milled and re-paved.
13:30 Probably a Ranger Raptor. If it is an F150, it's been imported by someone (or maybe they are near the American air base)
In Germany, Tar is used for the street. Not for decoration of political opponents.
Just like Feathers, in Germany feathers are used for pillows, bot for decorating political opponents.
Im just playing 😅😂Its just a joke
Just from the title I wondered how bad it is in the USA...
As a Dutch guy living in Germany, "Straßenarbeiten" and "DB" trigger me like nothing else.
Most of the time our constructions at the street are catastrophically slow. they blocking the road for weeks without anything happens. then they work for two days and things are done. after that, we wait again for two weeks to get the blocking removed. not because people want to do that, just because there are not enough people employed at this positions. "kaputtgespart" (saved money till destruction) is the keyword...
Best roads 1 - Singapore, total road quality score of 9.44/10:
Singapore has by far the highest overall road score, as it is the only nation to score higher than 9/10. It has the best road quality, as well as the fewest road traffic deaths, 1.69 per 100,000 people.
2 - Netherlands, total road quality score of 8.62/10:
The Netherlands has the second best roads in the world, despite having better roads than Singapore in 2014 they have since been surpassed. The Netherlands ranked in the top ten for all but one of the categories.
3 - Switzerland, total road quality score of 8.58/10:
The Swiss roads are only 0.4 points behind the Dutch roads, which edges them into third place in the rankings. Switzerland has some spectacular alpine drives such as the Furka Pass, and thankfully these epic roads are kept in good quality.
4 - Japan, total road quality score of 8.41/10:
Japan is the final country to have roads with a higher overall score than 8/10. Japan ranks in the top five countries for road quality, road traffic deaths, and the length of road per 100,000 km2.
5 - Denmark, total road quality score of 7.59/10:
The final entry into the top five is Denmark, which achieved a score of 7.59. Denmark has quite low speed-limits for non-motorway rural roads, as they are all set at 80 kmh (51 mph). Also, there are only 2.21 deaths on the road per 100,00 people. worst roads 1 - Kuwait, total road quality score of 1.33/10:
The country with the worst quality roads is Kuwait. The road quality score has dropped by more than 20% in five years, it was 4.6 in 2014 then dropped to 3.7 by 2019. Kuwait also has the third highest number of road traffic deaths per 100,000 people, almost 19.
2 - Costa Rica, total road quality score of 2.24/10:
There are five fewer people per 100,000 dying on the roads in Costa Rica, but the road quality score is 0.7 lower in the Central American nation than it was in Kuwait. Moreover, the road quality score of 3/10 is the lowest of any country studied.
3 - Georgia, total road quality score of 2.33/10:
Georgia sits right at the crossroads of Europe and Asia; the capital city, Tbilisi is within 500 miles of both the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Georgia ranked in the bottom 15 countries for all but one category.
4 - Panama, total road quality score of 2.54/10:
Panama borders Costa Rica, they have slightly nicer roads, but they still had a low score of just over 2.5. The road quality in Panama is getting worse, dropping by over 5% from 4.7 to 4.5 in 5 years. There are 13.99 road traffic death rates per 100,000 of the population on Panama’s highways.
5 - New Zealand, total road quality score of 2.93/10:
The roads in New Zealand are often mountainous, winding and narrow due to the nature of the spectacular landscape the country is famous for. These roads can be challenging to drive, and they have deteriorated by over 9% in the past five years, in 2014 they scored 5, but this dropped to 4.5 by 2019, one contributing factor could be the 2016 Kaikoura earthquake which destroyed a large section of the state highway 1 (New Zealand’s biggest road).
11:33 when done by hand they see little defaults that from a truck you wil miss, and it is just a 4 km 🚶♂️
I returned to France at the beginning of the year (I had been living in Canada) and was surprised to see many F150 Raptors and Rangers.
5:43 "Highway shut down for a few days" 😅 Construction sites like this shut down the Autobahn for several month. It's simply Germany. We are pretty good in making everything slow and expensive. Especially construction projects.😉
Living in Switzerland and I visit Germany a lot…. I wish they worked like this everywhere 😂
A F150 raptor is definitely not common in germany, but if someone wants a truck so bad he is ready to pay a big premium on an imported US truck, it might as well be a top tier one like the raptor. So if you see a US truck in Germany, chances of it being a raptor are probably a lot higher than in the US
An Autobahn consist of up to six different layers of material. (Asphaltdeckschicht, Asphaltbinderschicht, Asphalttragschicht, Planie, Koffer and Unterbau. How fast they can go depends on how many layers need to be replaced.
Machines and tools obviously make a big difference but if the people who are using them are slow or lazy and just don't care about working efficiently, even the best machines won't make them work faster.
I live in Luxembourg and some time ago, they tried something new...
Up until then, the construction companies had X amount of days/weeks to finish a project but every single time, they had delays and blamed it on the weather or broken machines or... you name it.
We have a bridge that needed to be worked on and everyone was very nervous because if you can't drive through that bridge, it takes a lot longer to get to the other side and a lot of people use that bridge to to go work. So they had an idea. They told the construction company that they had 6 weeks to finish the project _BUT_ they would get a bonus (money!) for every day they would finish before that dateline. Like I said, up until that project, not a single project was finished on time. In this case, they finished under 5 weeks! And no, they didn't take shortcuts or take risks, they just did their job!
This is exception. Usual highway construction in Germany is at least 6-18 months. You barely see someone working.
I am from Bavaria, Germany. Just got the federal street next to my house resurfaced. The street was closed for almost four weeks. It's only around 2 miles long. Though they did new rain drainage and crash guards in some parts as well. The street gets renewed every 10 - 15 years.
Section of Hwy I drive on in the U.S. , 20 mile stretch that was done in 4 days.
When it was initially widened it only took 2-3 weeks to tear up the old one completely and put a new one down.