National Highways has released new images and video to showcase its progress on a section of the A11 in Norfolk as a part of a nationwide drive to 'revitalise' concrete roads.
The government-owned company said on Tuesday (3 January) that its £60m project to reconstruct and re-lay the concrete road surface of the A11 carriageway between Spooner Row and the Tuttles Interchange has reached its halfway point after starting ‘earlier this year’.
It added that over the summer and autumn months, 8.6km of road were reconstructed on the northbound carriageway - first laid in the 1990s.
The project will also see replacement kerbs installed, the drainage system refurbished, safety barriers replaced, new road markings and new reflective road studs.
So far, work crews have:
- removed 30,000 cubic metres of concrete, which could fill 15 Olympic-sized swimming pools
- laid 72,000 tonnes of new asphalt road surface
- installed 10km of new drainage
- installed 6km of new safety barriers
Andy Jobling, national highways programme lead, said: ‘We are thrilled to complete the reconstruction of the northbound carriageway, which will provide a much smoother and quieter ride for tens of thousands of drivers every day.
‘Our attention now turns to repeating the reconstruction process on the southbound carriageway.'
Using specialist machinery, work crews will remove the old concrete road surface and some of the foundations on the southbound carriageway, before rebuilding the road with recycled material and a new asphalt surface.
National Highways said it has been using a number of innovative techniques to reduce the CO2 emissions during construction.
These include reusing the concrete removed from the northbound carriageway into the new road surface, powering average speed cameras with renewable energy and the exploratory use of kinetic floor tiles in the site compound that generate electricity when walked over.
The scheme is expected to be completed in summer 2023.
Concrete roads make up almost 400 miles (4%) of the strategic road network and are mostly found along the eastern side of the country. Around half of the old-style concrete roads in the East will either be repaired or replaced.
