Get ahead in road maintenance - starting this summer: TotalEnergies features in Highways magazine

TotalEnergies has been featured in the March 2023 issue of Highways magazine discussing why summer is a good time to carry out road maintenance, the importance of selecting the right bitumen grade, the advantages of warm-mix asphalt and how to manage ambient temperature.

Richard Ashton, Market Development Manager for Bitumen, explores how bitumen-polymer mix materials such as TotalEnergies Styrelf can reduce a road’s vulnerability to heat and cracking and Emulsis surface treatments can prevent pothole formation.

The impact of increasingly volatile and extreme weather conditions is showing up on our roads and creating year-round risks and responsibilities. While the wetter conditions and cold snaps of winter usher in a new wave of potholes each year, summer temperatures in excess of 40 degrees – which some parts of the UK saw last year - are melting the very ground we drive on. This is a vicious cycle of degradation, and a short-term focus on remedial road work is not enough.

The national government, local councils, and contractor stakeholders all share a responsibility to climate-proof our highways and futureproof asset management strategies, operating on a principle of ‘sustainability through durability’ that can accommodate weather extremes and lower the cumulative maintenance load over time.

In good news, there is no better time to kickstart a ‘horizon’ approach to road maintenance than the summer, not least because the work done in the warmer months will largely determine the volume and severity of road maintenance for the remainder of the year.

Filling potholes is top of the agenda for many local authorities, bolstered by a £200m injection of funds in the Spring Budget. But the need to fill potholes at all is, in many respects, a sign of systemic failure. Early issues detection and prevention is the ‘stitch in time’ that can save nine potholes.

Although appraising roads is a year-round task, tackling early or medium-stage microcracks in the summer months through resurfacing or Emulsis surface treatments can considerably reduce the development of potholes over the wetter, colder periods.

This, in turn, reduces the amount of remedial pothole work required the following summer, freeing up budget and resources for councils to undertake longer-term highway projects, and minimising disruption to road users.

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