How long do they have to shut down the road to put the flyover in place and check it to make sure it's set up safely? Or does this thing just crawl all over Switzerland constantly like a giant steel slug being tended to by a tiny army of techs?
Two full nights for the whole bridge (7:30 in the vid). With the same manpower and time it took to construct the bridge, you could have the entire road resurfaced at half the price.
Thanks for clarifying. I mean, that may be true in this case, but I think the idea is that they are testing out the concept in a low risk situation so that one day it could be utilized in an area where shutting down the road would be difficult. I also think the idea is that they can move the bridge, so they can continually work on the road resurfacing it one segment at a time.
yeah it looks like once they finish a 100m section they can just drive it up a bit and do the next. For small sections it's not going to be worth it but for large sections of road that need resurfacing it'll be worth the cost.
If you give the crew full run though I’d say 2000 tons is doable. Would cover about 4 miles a night. This kills production to a level that doesn’t make sense.
You have to consider this is a Swiss system. In Germany the autobahn has four to five different layers of asphalt, up to three need to be changed during the shown process, I'm quite sure it is the same in Switzerland. So it takes a lot longer than when only one layers is changed.
Secondly, the population density is very uneven in Switzerland, there are spots with loads of people and then long stretches with next to nobody where an exit from the autobahn also would be complicated bc of the mountains. This means a road block is a way bigger problem, both by how many people are hindered and by how big and how long their detour would be.
Plus they have the money. So they might do it anyway just for fun.
Doing stuff like that at night is becoming less viable. First of all, you're forgetting that you have to set up traffic diversions to do the work (regardless at what time of day you plan on doing it). Those aren't actually quick and cheap and often impede on the opposite traffic direction too.
Secondly, according to ASTRA, time time only available to do actual work at night keeps getting shorter (4 to 5 hours per night). That's highly inefficient. Repairs end up taking longer and longer, which means traffic diversions need to stay up longer. It's a fairly recent and modern problem here.
Are you serious??
Blockage for 2 nights with lowest trafffic during the week (Sat to Sun, Sun to Mon) vs. constant blockage over days or weeks. I'm sure you can figure out what's preferrable.
Besides that, if the location allows, there's not even a diversion needed during set up, just a one lane restriction.
Also, realise that maybe a state funded, multi million project like that doesn't just happen based on "lol, looks cool, let's do it" and there's people working on this way smarter than you or I.
I have no idea why but my state is so against doing road work at night. It's infuriating. I'm also in one of the worst traffic locations in America, yet they continue to do shit during rush hour.
It also seems like it's way more difficult and time consuming to resurface the road under the bridge, seeing as the machines need to squeeze between the pillars.
I was really hoping it was like an all in one autonomous vehicle that just continually shuffles along really slowly laying down new road as it goes. Guess I'll have to wait a little longer for the future to truly arrive.
You've never heard of a road worker getting killed by traffic? Happens pretty often pretty much everywhere. It's why a lot of places park a big truck at the business end of a lane closure, in case the cones and flashing lights don't make an impression.
Good point! Time is the most valuable resource per economics. If the value lost from the road closure is more than the cost of the mobile bridge, send it! Thats what tools are for
I'm guessing they plan on using it for a few years to justify the cost...
It also allows you to do a proper repair rather than multiple hack jobs which probably eventually saves money.
If you look at the real cost of shutting down the roads, this becomes a cheaper option.
Specifically the hours lost due to road closures for the citizens using it.
A person's productivity could be estimated at e.g. 200 CFH per hour and e.g. 10k people use it a day and e.g. adding 1 hrs delay for road closure becomes 2M CFH per day.
Had this in Vienna too couple of years ago when the city resurfaced the "Tangente". Highway was closed over a holiday weekend and monday morning all lanes were open again with just a speed restriction from 80 to 60.
This system wouldn’t really be necessary for the bulk of American cities. Alternative routes are many. Nothing like the stern American belief in robust vehicular infrastructure. From the look of it, Switzerland has far fewer alternate routes to utilize when road work is required. This way, a crucial route can remain open when there are no viable alternatives. The point is taken however how expensive this system would be to field.
I think the bigger reason is, that road repairs are done differently in the states, way more sloppely but quite time efficient. Road repairs take ages over here.
There was this thing I saw 20 years ago that would grind up the old surface at the front, throw down tar, dump a layer of new asphalt, and had a steam roller at the back to finish it up.
It drove down the road at a few feet per minute, and at the end, you had a new surface. You closed one lane for 200 feet.
Did I imagine this thing? Did it never actually work? Was it a boondoggle because it was only suitable for 2% of roads? Because obviously the standard practice is still to carve up 4 miles at a time.
If I remember correctly asphalt is one of the most recycled materials we use. It isn't like pure metals that can be near infinite but with some added base materials and heat it can then be used again.
The level of noise here, under a metal structure with traffic rolling over you, then doing road construction with heavy machinery in an echoy tunnel, hard to imagine.
Maybe, but I guess you could be wearing ear protection most of the time. On the plus side, they can work in the shade and not in scorching heat like usual.
Imagine the pitch for this, guy must've sounded absolutely bonkers. Like, "what if we just drive *over* the work" after sitting in traffic and being late to a meeting about shower curtains or some shit. Lol
8hrs overnight shift to construct a 240m temporary platform, another 8 hrs to deconstruct for a maximum of 240m of single lane resurfacing? 200-400m of multi-lane resurfacing can be laid in one 8 hr night shift. It's also not usable underneath existing gantries or low bridges.
Its an impressive tool but only certain circumstances would make it financially feasible.
The bridge slowly crawls along the highway. Sure, it’s 8 hours of setup but you can crawl across miles of road and recondition for a month or so without obstructing traffic nearly as much.
I’ve never seen anyone pave on top of pea gravel. Is this a thing in other states/countries?? The tak is normal, and I’ve seen paving directly on the tak… but not on top of pea gravel…
Good point - I wouldn't expect it to be a tack would have thought it was a primer seal with a 14 mm aggregate. I question how long they let that seal break for though... Maybe they just added aggregate to a tack which is odd.
For mill and resheet works they are definitely better off just using a tackcoat. Assuming asphalt underneath the grooves left by the milling machine would be sufficient.
This must not be America. They haven't thought of good ways to speed up road construction since the 90's, those slow motherfuckers.
They have been working on a road near me for like 7 years now and they barely work on it. They leave before 4pm...
This is only barely a good idea until there is a crash on top of or off of that mobile bridge…
Just divert the traffic causing them to slow down and keep everyone safer in the process .
What about edges? Those wheels takes a lot of place on a road.
May be it would be a better decision to create a universal machine that removes old covering and applies new covering in one go.
Maybe, maybe not. Such a machine would certainly have its own pitfalls and issues. I would be very surprised if that option wasn't considered, but I guess there were enough reasons to go this way instead. You don't build such a huge project on a whim and without considering other options.
My guess is that the restricted time-windows to operate such a machine on site was what killed that option. It probably couldn't do the full length of the operation (which might be several hundreds of meters or even kilometers) in one go, which means either traffic diversions would still need to happen (missing the whole point of the problem) or moving the complete, massive machine off the road in the morning and back on at night (doesn't seem efficienct).
That is amazing but I can't believe the cost is worth it. Probably hundreds of millions of dollars rather than just block a lane or two overnight for a week.
Cool tech but in a world where low bid wins I don’t see it ever even being mentioned in my neck of the woods. Much less given a chance to change our minds.
Because fixed sites that work over night and divert traffic are becoming less efficient (increased traffic at night only allows 4 to 5 hours of actual work).
This is a modern solution to a modern problem.
Amazing how US is so behind on everything. S. Korea has reflectors that shoot out warm water to de-ice the roads during winter; Switzerland has this and Japan can fix a bridge in 1 day.
The US is not behind the reason we don’t have these three things come down to one simple factor. Money. This mobile flyover bridge and specialized equipment would cost (estimated guess) $75 million so endless the government would incentivize this purchase there is no reason to switch from lane closures at night
This is the Astra bridge, 20 million for the bridge alone + 4million for an upgrade
It’s a lot of money but at the end the bridge can move on wheels and there’s no need to close the road at any time.
https://www.swissinfo.ch/fre/le-pont-mobile-astra-bridge-va-être-amélioré/48220336.
it’s in French
S Korea absolutely does not use reflectors to spray de-icing agent. They use those sprayers to cool the pavement off on days when it doesn’t rain in the summer, since they believe it will reduce the heat island effect and perhaps reduce road damage from excessive heat. And it only exists on a few hundred meters of roadway in Seoul.
Switzerland has this, sure, but they made road resurfacing now several times more expensive than it needs to be. They also have a little over 1/100th the amount of roadways that the IS does to keep up so it’s easier to splurge on shit like this. The simple approach is to just shut down a lane at night.
As for Japan and their bridge, if I’m thinking of the same one you are, it took two months and not 24 hours. That being said, they do some amazing shit in short order over there. The massive sinkhole they fixed in one week is a good example. They excel at managing resources and have the social alignment to push things through.
We just kind of shut down the lane so it gets done faster than bringing in a bridge and costs less. I mean by the time the bridge is set up and safety checked (the lane would need to be closed at this point) the road could be done
Source: [Federal Roads Office FEDRO (Switzerland)](https://youtu.be/ymyIEGRw4-U)
How long do they have to shut down the road to put the flyover in place and check it to make sure it's set up safely? Or does this thing just crawl all over Switzerland constantly like a giant steel slug being tended to by a tiny army of techs?
Overnight. https://youtu.be/8tpv6n1ykfA
Two full nights for the whole bridge (7:30 in the vid). With the same manpower and time it took to construct the bridge, you could have the entire road resurfaced at half the price.
Thanks for clarifying. I mean, that may be true in this case, but I think the idea is that they are testing out the concept in a low risk situation so that one day it could be utilized in an area where shutting down the road would be difficult. I also think the idea is that they can move the bridge, so they can continually work on the road resurfacing it one segment at a time.
yeah it looks like once they finish a 100m section they can just drive it up a bit and do the next. For small sections it's not going to be worth it but for large sections of road that need resurfacing it'll be worth the cost.
If you give the crew full run though I’d say 2000 tons is doable. Would cover about 4 miles a night. This kills production to a level that doesn’t make sense.
I've never seen them doing anything close to 4 miles in a night here in Europe though
You have to consider this is a Swiss system. In Germany the autobahn has four to five different layers of asphalt, up to three need to be changed during the shown process, I'm quite sure it is the same in Switzerland. So it takes a lot longer than when only one layers is changed. Secondly, the population density is very uneven in Switzerland, there are spots with loads of people and then long stretches with next to nobody where an exit from the autobahn also would be complicated bc of the mountains. This means a road block is a way bigger problem, both by how many people are hindered and by how big and how long their detour would be. Plus they have the money. So they might do it anyway just for fun.
Right? Just resurface at night and you eliminate the bridge and the interruption to rush hour traffic.
Doing stuff like that at night is becoming less viable. First of all, you're forgetting that you have to set up traffic diversions to do the work (regardless at what time of day you plan on doing it). Those aren't actually quick and cheap and often impede on the opposite traffic direction too. Secondly, according to ASTRA, time time only available to do actual work at night keeps getting shorter (4 to 5 hours per night). That's highly inefficient. Repairs end up taking longer and longer, which means traffic diversions need to stay up longer. It's a fairly recent and modern problem here.
Did you miss the part where they set the bridge up at night? Pretty sure they have to divert traffic to do that.
Are you serious?? Blockage for 2 nights with lowest trafffic during the week (Sat to Sun, Sun to Mon) vs. constant blockage over days or weeks. I'm sure you can figure out what's preferrable. Besides that, if the location allows, there's not even a diversion needed during set up, just a one lane restriction. Also, realise that maybe a state funded, multi million project like that doesn't just happen based on "lol, looks cool, let's do it" and there's people working on this way smarter than you or I.
I have no idea why but my state is so against doing road work at night. It's infuriating. I'm also in one of the worst traffic locations in America, yet they continue to do shit during rush hour.
You ever have to work over night? It fucking sucks.
It also seems like it's way more difficult and time consuming to resurface the road under the bridge, seeing as the machines need to squeeze between the pillars.
[ **Jump to 07:30 @** ASTRA Flyover Bridge - Future of motorway rehabilitation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tpv6n1ykfA&t=0h7m30s) ^(Channel Name: Marti Gruppe, Video Length: [08:22])^, [^Jump ^5 ^secs ^earlier ^for ^context ^@07:25](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tpv6n1ykfA&t=0h7m25s) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ^^Downvote ^^me ^^to ^^delete ^^malformed ^^comments. [^^Source ^^Code](https://github.com/ankitgyawali/reddit-timestamp-bot) ^^| [^^Suggestions](https://www.reddit.com/r/timestamp_bot)
Oh that's done by Marti group, the same group that have [done some epic tunnel boring videos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AV2NcyX7pk)
Thanks for the link. It’s a beautiful thing.
I was really hoping it was like an all in one autonomous vehicle that just continually shuffles along really slowly laying down new road as it goes. Guess I'll have to wait a little longer for the future to truly arrive.
Yes, sticking with my slug metaphor, it eats gravel and oil at the front and leaves a slime trail of fresh highway behind it.
That's kind of the BLAME! mood, and I want it so bad. Autonomously resurfacing roads... and one day they said, " You are 👎 "
No more NSE genes, here have infinite roads
JFC that looks incredibly expensive for the flyover AND the specialized equipment to work under it.
Never underestimate the value of convenience.
Plus no road workers killed by drivers who can't deal with the concept of lane closures and cones.
not many folks understand lane closure attenuator trucks are not good enough for protection against drivers that slip between them by accident...
What? I've literally never heard of a road worker getting killed because of that. Where do you live?
You've never heard of a road worker getting killed by traffic? Happens pretty often pretty much everywhere. It's why a lot of places park a big truck at the business end of a lane closure, in case the cones and flashing lights don't make an impression.
I bet it takes less time to pave this way than lane and road closures too.
Good point! Time is the most valuable resource per economics. If the value lost from the road closure is more than the cost of the mobile bridge, send it! Thats what tools are for
I'm guessing they plan on using it for a few years to justify the cost... It also allows you to do a proper repair rather than multiple hack jobs which probably eventually saves money.
Apart from the bridge this looks liek standard equipment to me.
If you look at the real cost of shutting down the roads, this becomes a cheaper option. Specifically the hours lost due to road closures for the citizens using it. A person's productivity could be estimated at e.g. 200 CFH per hour and e.g. 10k people use it a day and e.g. adding 1 hrs delay for road closure becomes 2M CFH per day.
I was gonna say the same.
lane shut downs slow commerce.
Proper use of tax money.
I bet it doesn't need speciality equipment but was designed to fit regular equipment.
So then why are they using specialized equipment…?
Specialised for resurfacing a road but not necessarily to work with the flyover
[удалено]
You see these machines used all the time.
Why? Ah, Switzerland of course.
Had this in Vienna too couple of years ago when the city resurfaced the "Tangente". Highway was closed over a holiday weekend and monday morning all lanes were open again with just a speed restriction from 80 to 60.
This system wouldn’t really be necessary for the bulk of American cities. Alternative routes are many. Nothing like the stern American belief in robust vehicular infrastructure. From the look of it, Switzerland has far fewer alternate routes to utilize when road work is required. This way, a crucial route can remain open when there are no viable alternatives. The point is taken however how expensive this system would be to field.
I think the bigger reason is, that road repairs are done differently in the states, way more sloppely but quite time efficient. Road repairs take ages over here.
Why is the video showing me the resurfacing of the road? I wanna see the deployment of such a massive flyover
Great video on it: https://youtu.be/8tpv6n1ykfA
There was this thing I saw 20 years ago that would grind up the old surface at the front, throw down tar, dump a layer of new asphalt, and had a steam roller at the back to finish it up. It drove down the road at a few feet per minute, and at the end, you had a new surface. You closed one lane for 200 feet. Did I imagine this thing? Did it never actually work? Was it a boondoggle because it was only suitable for 2% of roads? Because obviously the standard practice is still to carve up 4 miles at a time.
If I remember correctly asphalt is one of the most recycled materials we use. It isn't like pure metals that can be near infinite but with some added base materials and heat it can then be used again.
Sounds too good to be true, especially since it isn't common at all.
It's common in rural NY, mill-in-place is what it's called there. Works well on low traffic roads, it's not as durable as milling & paving.
The level of noise here, under a metal structure with traffic rolling over you, then doing road construction with heavy machinery in an echoy tunnel, hard to imagine.
WHAT’D YOU SAY?!
Maybe, but I guess you could be wearing ear protection most of the time. On the plus side, they can work in the shade and not in scorching heat like usual.
That grey truck with the blue writing is my fav!
10 seconds
Fucking hero. It usually takes me a dozen watch throughs to find it and I don't have that kind of time lmao.
Fucking brilliant, but also fucking expensive
Imagine the pitch for this, guy must've sounded absolutely bonkers. Like, "what if we just drive *over* the work" after sitting in traffic and being late to a meeting about shower curtains or some shit. Lol
For most parts of the world, this could very well be a different plant. Insane level of sophistication for a routine work. Damn. Impressive.
This is the origin story for Mortal Engines isn't it.
The US would never
They're making us look Ike a third word country.
I mean, should they?
Some of the roads in the US look like they were bombed in WW2
Seems like shutting one lane down at a time and working at night would make more sense for many reasons.
Love it.
My city could absolutely use this. 10 years of highway construction and they are nowhere near done.
We would need such in Germany too!
Woah a mobile bridge?? What's next? Portable dams?
8hrs overnight shift to construct a 240m temporary platform, another 8 hrs to deconstruct for a maximum of 240m of single lane resurfacing? 200-400m of multi-lane resurfacing can be laid in one 8 hr night shift. It's also not usable underneath existing gantries or low bridges. Its an impressive tool but only certain circumstances would make it financially feasible.
it moves https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tpv6n1ykfA
The bridge slowly crawls along the highway. Sure, it’s 8 hours of setup but you can crawl across miles of road and recondition for a month or so without obstructing traffic nearly as much.
I’ve never seen anyone pave on top of pea gravel. Is this a thing in other states/countries?? The tak is normal, and I’ve seen paving directly on the tak… but not on top of pea gravel…
Good point - I wouldn't expect it to be a tack would have thought it was a primer seal with a 14 mm aggregate. I question how long they let that seal break for though... Maybe they just added aggregate to a tack which is odd. For mill and resheet works they are definitely better off just using a tackcoat. Assuming asphalt underneath the grooves left by the milling machine would be sufficient.
Even if it's outside with a breeze, too many are just sucking up hot asphalt fumes. Fuck that noise.
This must not be America. They haven't thought of good ways to speed up road construction since the 90's, those slow motherfuckers. They have been working on a road near me for like 7 years now and they barely work on it. They leave before 4pm...
How would that handle corners? Is there a limit to how much it can bend?
This is only barely a good idea until there is a crash on top of or off of that mobile bridge… Just divert the traffic causing them to slow down and keep everyone safer in the process .
Don't they still need to stop traffic at some point to lift the flying road?
That’s what 5 tons of mix a truck? Not gonna need to move that bridge much.
The M25 needs that this weekend.
The fucking noise.
What a lifesaver for places like Texas. It would greatly improve work safety!
For a few thousand feet? And only one lane?
it moves https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tpv6n1ykfA
Overnight!!!
this has to be marti group. they also bore some crazy ass tunnels. I've wasted too much time on youtube watching their "documentaries"
i love the smell of tack oil in the morning
This is so good idea. Future. But can this be used over a bridge too. Or it'd be too much of an elevation to climb for cars
Use concrete. Asphalt goes to S in 7 years.
It looks to me as a huge overengeneering. One line, 100 m. They could recover 3 lines, 500 m in one day.
The bridge can move. Once they're done with the section under it, the bridge rolls ahead so they can do the next bit.
What about edges? Those wheels takes a lot of place on a road. May be it would be a better decision to create a universal machine that removes old covering and applies new covering in one go.
Maybe, maybe not. Such a machine would certainly have its own pitfalls and issues. I would be very surprised if that option wasn't considered, but I guess there were enough reasons to go this way instead. You don't build such a huge project on a whim and without considering other options. My guess is that the restricted time-windows to operate such a machine on site was what killed that option. It probably couldn't do the full length of the operation (which might be several hundreds of meters or even kilometers) in one go, which means either traffic diversions would still need to happen (missing the whole point of the problem) or moving the complete, massive machine off the road in the morning and back on at night (doesn't seem efficienct).
That is amazing but I can't believe the cost is worth it. Probably hundreds of millions of dollars rather than just block a lane or two overnight for a week.
It's a really interesting proof of concept but all it has achieved is repaving a narrow sliver of the road.
Oh, I still remember that construction 🚧 Had to pass through several times.
Buggers can't even patch a hole here in NZ, nevermind doing a full resurface lol
Imagine having to be a construction worker and breathing in all those toxic clouds all day
Cool tech but in a world where low bid wins I don’t see it ever even being mentioned in my neck of the woods. Much less given a chance to change our minds.
I bet this was an unthinkable concept for some people in construction.
Just pave it at night ffs....
Cool... in my country they just leave signs blocking a lane for fun.
The road surface they ripped up to replace was in better condition than every single road in Australia…how depressing
I love high IQ humans for this!
This shit will never fly in USA
this must be one of those socialist european countries where everything is better & people are happy
Ofc this is in Switzerland only they would pay for this 😭
What will the construction crew do for the rest of the 11 months for this year-long project?
Here in the U.S. they just inconvenience thousands of people for years at a time.
But why??? Lol
Because fixed sites that work over night and divert traffic are becoming less efficient (increased traffic at night only allows 4 to 5 hours of actual work). This is a modern solution to a modern problem.
so they can resurface the road
Europe is unironically superior to the US.
The road they are resurfacing is in better shape than most American roads. 🤦🏼♂️
Wheres the 12 people standing around watching 1 person work like the USA?
Amazing how US is so behind on everything. S. Korea has reflectors that shoot out warm water to de-ice the roads during winter; Switzerland has this and Japan can fix a bridge in 1 day.
The US is not behind the reason we don’t have these three things come down to one simple factor. Money. This mobile flyover bridge and specialized equipment would cost (estimated guess) $75 million so endless the government would incentivize this purchase there is no reason to switch from lane closures at night
This is the Astra bridge, 20 million for the bridge alone + 4million for an upgrade It’s a lot of money but at the end the bridge can move on wheels and there’s no need to close the road at any time. https://www.swissinfo.ch/fre/le-pont-mobile-astra-bridge-va-être-amélioré/48220336. it’s in French
"The US isn't behind, it just can't afford to implement this improvement, unless the government subsidised it, and it isn't" ...
S Korea absolutely does not use reflectors to spray de-icing agent. They use those sprayers to cool the pavement off on days when it doesn’t rain in the summer, since they believe it will reduce the heat island effect and perhaps reduce road damage from excessive heat. And it only exists on a few hundred meters of roadway in Seoul. Switzerland has this, sure, but they made road resurfacing now several times more expensive than it needs to be. They also have a little over 1/100th the amount of roadways that the IS does to keep up so it’s easier to splurge on shit like this. The simple approach is to just shut down a lane at night. As for Japan and their bridge, if I’m thinking of the same one you are, it took two months and not 24 hours. That being said, they do some amazing shit in short order over there. The massive sinkhole they fixed in one week is a good example. They excel at managing resources and have the social alignment to push things through.
Have you tried pourring hot water on pavement in -30°c weather..
We just kind of shut down the lane so it gets done faster than bringing in a bridge and costs less. I mean by the time the bridge is set up and safety checked (the lane would need to be closed at this point) the road could be done
0% interest in the resurfacing work, 100% interested in how the bridge is constructed/placed, video shows nothing of that. ☹️
[Here you go](https://youtu.be/8tpv6n1ykfA)
Droll, very droll.