Highways too hot to handle

[ensho]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JG17Ak01.html


High temperatures, bright sunshine and clear skies spell happiness for tourists but a nightmare for those who work in Turkey's public transportation. Last week, the crew of an Atlas Jet flight from Siirt to Istanbul and booked with 70 passengers and their luggage learned that the departing runway had reached melting point.

The outside temperature of 40 degrees Celsius meant that the pilot's only option for a safe takeoff was to take half the passengers off. All 70 were weighed and then 34 of the passenger were allowed to board, but they had to agree to leave their luggage behind. At a total weight of only 2,380 kilograms, the average svelte passenger that made it to Istanbul that day weighed only 68kg.

The same problem is affecting roads all over the country. In the past month there have been three reports of roads melting. On June 16, reports came in of the highway between the large western cities of Aydin and Izmir melting when the temperature again reached 40 degrees.

Emergency teams had to be called in to pour sand and gravel on the liquefied areas and drivers were forced to abide by strict speed restrictions. In southeast Turkey, on the road between Viransehir and Ceylanpinar in Sanliurfa province, on June 28 the heat made the road so sticky that those that tried to walk on it found their shoes stuck to the tar.

The residents of Kinik village were once very happy to be part of the government's Koydes project - which invests in improving fresh water availability and roads in rural areas - but less happy at the beginning of this month when their new road melted. As the melted avenue is also the main street that runs through the center of the village, residents must roll up their pant legs and walk across it. Wealthier countries that encounter extreme temperatures like Saudi Arabia make their roads from concrete to avoid the problem of melting.
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any of our roads melting? yet.

[ben_meyers]

1. They should come to Phoenix to learn how to build roads

40c = 104f. This time of the year in Phoenix the "normal" high is 106 or so, has been for as long as anyone can remember and our roads don't melt. Sounds like an engineering problem.

[MadHound]

3. Sounds the same to me

Hell, I live in Missouri, and triple digit temps are a rarity(they come around every two to three years here). However our roads are engineered to take both the heat and the cold, and rarely do we have to worry about roads liquifying or buckling due to heat. It happens once in a great while, but nothing like what this article is talking about.

Just sounds like poor engineering, bad materials, or both.

[Indenturedebtor]

5. Yeah too bad they don't know how to dig a drainage ditch out here

Tucson shuts down in a thunderstorm. Nearly every road floods. No drainage! Idiots.

[ben_meyers]

6. No kidding

I-60 in Tempe was closed Sunday night for almost 3 hours because of 2 inches of rain. There are only 3 multi million dollar pump stations to handle the runoff. Who designed that system? All those poor people late getting home, what a travesty.

[Indenturedebtor]

7. It's so stupid. In Indiana it will rain for weeks at a time

And the roads stay open. Whoever designed these highways should have their thinking license revoked.

[izquierdista]

8. They don't have to go that far

I'm sure their Iraqi neighbors have experience with 40c.

Probably will be a follow on story about a Turkish road construction company substituting cheaper bitumen mix meant for colder climates and pocketing the difference.

[Submariner]

2. I was on I-!0 between Baton Rouge and NOLA

and saw a puff of dust in the air in front of me, and then found myself slamming on the brakes so as not to hit slabs of broken concrete. The expansion joint was probably not big enough and the heat caused the concrete to expand and explode from the pressure. Scary at 75 mph.

I haven't seen gooey asphalt yet.

[high density]

4. Melting runway?

I suspect it has more to do with limitations of the the aircraft and its engines than the heat of the runway.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_and_high