Capping the road surface

Oct 08, 2016 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

It is pleasing to see the road works that are being undertaken in the city. It is a sign that the government is not going to allow the City Council to fail.
The government is bailing out City Hall once again. It is undertaking the laying of ‘top’ on roads in the city.
The sub-surface of the roads is not being tampered with. The works that are going on are also, not all patching. The roads are not being dug up or re-laid. They are simply being capped with a thick layer of asphalt. A top is being put on the old road surface which acts as a base.
The finished product looks good. The finished road is smooth, encouraging drivers to speed. The road surface is raised. It looks brand new. But the foundation of the road has not been touched.
This is the modern way of dealing with road deterioration. There is no need to dig up the road surface. A new top crowns the road surface and it looks like a brand new road. It is not a brand new road. The road has got a brand new top.
One of the consequences of this type of relaying is that it increases the original height of the roadway. The road surface becomes elevated.
The elevation of the road surface poses problems for the inclines at the side of the roads. One of the problems with the resurfacing of roads in Guyana has been the practice of raising the height of the road surface either by recapping it or when relaying the road by building it up higher than it usually is.
This has caused the parapets at the side of the roads to have steep inclines and many of them such as on North Road, on South Road and on Lamaha Street, all in the city, to slide into the canals which run alongside these roads. There is need for the government to obtain some engineering advice as to the extent to which raising the road surfaces in the city can increase the erosion of the parapets.
The recapping of the roads in the city by the government is making these roads unsafe. And not just because of the fact that the smooth, flat surfaces encourages speeding. The recapping of the road is leading to a major structural change to our roadways. The roads are becoming at least ten inches narrower.
The reason for this is that when you raise the road surface, there has to be at least five inches on either side which is not capped which is necessary to prevent the sides from being damaged. A number of one way roads which (in the past) could have accommodated two lanes are now being reduced to one lane because the roads are being narrowed when it is capped with flat top of asphalt.
What should have happened is that the parapets should have been scoped and indents made so that the entire width of the old road surface could have been capped and enough space left to allow for a small shoulder on either side which would not be part of the old road.
The government agency which is undertaking the resurfacing of the roads should measure the width of the roads before they are capped and then measure them after. They will discover that the completed road is actually narrower than what it used to be previously.
This is not a problem with the new administration. It also happened with the old administration. They did the same thing on many occasions. So the technology of capping roads has been in use for many years now.
It may seem progressive but so long as it results in cases in which the width of the road is narrowed, then it is a case in which the road is not as safe and wide as it used to be. That cannot be progress.

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