The deterioration of our asphalt roads poses a long-term maintenance problem, requiring extensive digging and construction (and horrible ruts and potholes when they simply aren’t maintained). So why not makes roads out of easy-to-replace plastic slabs?
Working with the city of Rotterdam, a Dutch company called VolkerWessels has recently proposed exactly that. It wants to develop and construct plastic roads that are as easy to remove as they are to install. The design also features a hollow cavity inside the road slabs for pipe and wiring. While prototypes have yet to be tested, the work required to maintain such roads would theoretically be much simpler than with their asphalt predecessors.
As Gizmodo points out, such a road design isn’t feasible yet—VolkerWessels is simply testing it. The idea behind the design, however, has a whiff of clever futuristic thinking about it. Instead of making roads and maintaining them ad infinitum, VolkerWessels plastic roads accommodate their own removal and replacement, right from the beginning.
This story originally appeared on popularmechanics.com via WolkerVessels and Gizmodo.
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