Road Quality In Doha
Does anyone notice everytime poured down in Doha,the road start to disintegrated in no time. You will notice the road start to crack, and in some places pot holes appear very quickly.
In other countries, you can have rain for days but not not affecting the road as bad as Doha.
Is this happening because the poor quality of the company, cutting the corner too much, or is this happening because another reason?
All the Roads are constructed in accordance with the Qatar Highway Code and the road constrution is inspected, approved & certifified by Ministry officials at every stage of the construction.
O really ;)
I have to kind of walk on eggshells here a bit
But to answer your question, water is roads arch enemy, and if you keep the surface intact and drains clear you can prolong the roads life.
Now as soon as you get a pothole, or wide cracks in the surface and water can get inside and start causing all kinds of problems. It causes paths of weakness in the layers and in additon to the high traffic you then get rapid failure. Pothole patching and crack sealing needs to be done regulalryl and especially before the 'wet' season in any country.
Traffic has grown quite considerably in Qatar and anecdotally you will find that roads were designed for traffic levels much lower than today. In addition there is serious overloading of trucks, with not enough enforcement e.g on salwa 100tonne trucks have been found, also some that were more than the machine could actually measure, UK motorway limit is half that.
Imagine a Sandstrom island wide and cost of clearing/clening the entire surface water drainage system filled with sand.
some countries esp. in Asia. But it seems even that small amount of water made some drainage clogged-up? I saw some roads (interior streets) still w/ water retained.
There's was a news article after the last heavy rainfall saying that the government were considering putting in proper drainage, as in the long run it would be cheaper than the repairs and extraction of water.
Thats why you see deployment of surface water extracing machines immediately after rain in all over the trouble spots in Qatar (Not in the Industrial Area)
It's probably due more to the amount of heavy and probably overloaded truck traffic. Big trucks can break up good pavement very quickly.
Signature line > "You can't fix stupid"
Cost of reparing the Entire Road Network after the rainfall is much much lower than the building & maintence of a Road Drainage System for a country with a scant annual raifall of 135 cubic MM a year.
Qatar highway code is a copy of the British Scottland highway authority code. so it must be good enough as qatar receives way less pour to UK... isnt it!!!!.
to be honest for a bitumen road the biggest enemy is the water. so care is to be take to see the water never stays on road surface it must be drained off the sides with its profile....
All the Roads are constructed in accordance with the Qatar Highway Code and the road constrution is inspected, approved & certifified by Ministry officials at every stage of the construction.
Lucky - nice explanation. So would you say that the roads have been poorly designed, and are of poor quality given the conditions they have to withstand?
thats was technically explained.. cool. cheers
The design is based on the Qatar Highway Code which is basically to lay Type A - Type D Premix on compacted sub base. Premix is floating on sub base when the water seep through during heavy rains which creates a disintergation of the surface leading to evantual cracks and break ups.
The Interlock paved service road around Asian Games Stadium was vertually floated due to heavy downpour during Asian Games and still the signs of this are there for you to see.
everybody thinks Doha is covered with an umbrella so NO rain would every show in Doha.... so no surface drainage nor run off system.... but this perspective was changed with the heavy lashes during Dec 2006. where the the whole doha was drowned.... its was the eyeopener.
so may be roads need to take these into account...
If they built the roads with a flat incline and without the proper "compactness" in the various layers then I think that can be classed as poor quality, don't you?
i.e. They didn't build the roads to a quality good enough to be able to withstand the conditions. So they are poor quality.
Multiple reasons...
But not poor quality....
The main concern has to be "the water should not be allowed to collect on roads or its surroundings".... The more water collects the more the chances of deteriorating of quality.
Reasons are
1. Drainage ...is a new concept in Doha.
2. Road incline is pretty flat. Its designed according to the average regional rainfall.
And I believe the amount of water used to compact the various layers that make up the base is less....thats why any serious rainfall could induce settlement in new construction here....just my opinion
If we having few more days of rain, the area outside my house will be very messy.
Just been to the industrial area this morning, puddles and lakes everywhere.
I'm guessing they don't use materials suitable for rain (i.e. they use cheap materials). Plus they definitely don't design the roads so the water runs off properly, hence all the large puddles/lakes.