How to Build the 100-year Road

TotalEnergies has been featured in the August/ September Issue of Highways magazine, discussing the expected evolution of highways and the necessity for innovation in order to promote the longevity, durability, and resilience of road surfaces.

Using high-performance binder’s such as TotalEnergies’ Styrelf and Emulsis, allows for the improved performance of roads and the prevention of premature fatigue and longitudinal cracking.

As transportation demands continue to evolve, the need for road infrastructure built to stand the test of time has never been greater.

Road utilisation, and the conditions they are subjected to, will undoubtedly be different one hundred years from now, but this long-term horizon is both a realistic and necessary approach. To ensure infrastructure resilience and resource efficiency, highways must be designed with the future in mind, considering factors such as climate change, evolving vehicle types, and usage patterns.

We can expect more volatile weather conditions including hotter summers and wetted winters, heavier vehicles, and faster wear as electric vehicles-which are around 30% heavier than their combustion counterparts–are widely adopted, and even evolved traffic patterns to accommodate the introduction of autonomous vehicles resulting in more channelised loading. Durability is key to future proofing. So, while current design standards centre on meeting current needs as efficiently as possible, material and design decisions need to be taken with a longer-term view to deliver smarter, higher quality specifications with increased lifespans.

This might include, for instance, pushing pavement design from an 80 million standard axle (MSA)toa100 MSA to build longevity into every aspect of the design process; or improving deterioration modelling to enable efficient preventative maintenance planning. On the material front, investing in higher quality materials than is required by the current Design Manual for Roads and Bridges is important to ensure that materials and application processes are fit for purpose, in particular the utilisation of good quality polymer modified binders to reduce fatigue failure, for example75/130-75 PMB’s in the upper layers and 25/55-65 in the lower layers.

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