Highway and municipal traffic in Canada, particularly in the major urban areas, continues to rise. In the Toronto area, Highway 401 is the major east/west corridor and has annual average daily traffic levels exceeding 400,000. While an express toll route that opened in 1996 was expected to easetraffic on Highway 401, traffic levels on the toll route are also quite high. With increasing heavy vehicle traffic, the highway infrastructure is deteriorating more rapidly than expected which has resulted in the need torenew and repair the highway infrastructure. In order to minimize the impact of the road construction on the highway users, both the highway and toll road agencies have turned to innovation in design, construction and traffic management. This has included the use of advanced warning systems forconstruction, provision of the same number of lanes during construction, performance incentives and penalties, use of police presence, pavement construction innovations such as fast track concrete, pre-cast concrete panels, thin surface restoration techniques such as micro-surfacing and texturization, dowel bar retrofit, foaming injection to stabilize concrete slabs,slab stitching, etc. This paper provides an overview of the innovations to minimize the impact of road construction on the travelling public and surrounding home owners and businesses. For the covering abstract see ITRD E139491.
Abstract