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Concept
Road surface
Summary
A road surface (English), or pavement (American), is the durable surface material laid down on an area intended to sustain vehicular or foot traffic, such as a road or walkway. In the past, gravel road surfaces, macadam, hoggin, cobblestone and granite setts were extensively used, but these have mostly been replaced by asphalt or concrete laid on a compacted base course. Asphalt mixtures have been used in pavement construction since the beginning of the 20th century and are of two types: metalled (hard-surfaced) and unmetalled roads. Metalled roadways are made to sustain vehicular load and so are usually made on frequently used roads. Unmetalled roads, also known as gravel roads, are rough and can sustain less weight. Road surfaces are frequently marked to guide traffic.
Today, permeable paving methods are beginning to be used for low-impact roadways and walkways. Pavements are crucial to countries such as United States and Canada, which heavily depend on road transportation. Therefore, research projects such as Long-Term Pavement Performance have been launched to optimize the life cycle of different road surfaces.
History of road transport
Wheeled transport created the need for better roads. Generally, natural materials cannot be both soft enough to form well-graded surfaces and strong enough to bear wheeled vehicles, especially when wet, and stay intact. In urban areas it began to be worthwhile to build stone-paved streets and, in fact, the first paved streets appear to have been built in Ur in 4000 BC. Corduroy roads were built in Glastonbury, England in 3300 BC, and brick-paved roads were built in the Indus Valley Civilisation on the Indian subcontinent from around the same time. Improvements in metallurgy meant that by 2000 BC stone-cutting tools were generally available in the Middle East and Greece allowing local streets to be paved. Notably, in about 2000 BC, the Minoans built a 50 km paved road from Knossos in northern Crete through the mountains to Gortyn and Lebena, a port on the south coast of the island, which had side drains, a 200 mm thick pavement of sandstone blocks bound with clay-gypsum mortar, covered by a layer of basaltic flagstones and had separate shoulders.
Official source
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