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| The portrait of Ir. Alik Ansyori Alamsyah, M. T., the civil engineering lecturer of the University of Muhammadiyah Malang (UMM). (Photo by Rizki PR of UMM) |
From damaged roads to overnight repairs, road repair and construction are recently becoming a trending topic on social media platforms. Many wonder how to build a suitable and durable road section. In this case, the civil engineering lecturer of the University of Muhammadiyah Malang, Ir. Alik Ansyori Alamsyah, M. T., shares his perspective. Before repairing a road, the government must notice several aspects, like average daily traffic, soil-bearing capacity, and road rep load.
“I exemplify (roads in) Lampung. As we see, vehicles traveling on the road are mostly big, so I don’t think we can reconstruct the road quickly,” said he.
In its implementation, road construction planning can’t be as simple as it is. The government must know the repetition load of the road to be constructed before determining the thickness of the road. Road repetition load itself is the calculation of the daily load-carrying capacity of a road.
Alik feels that roads in Lampung don’t fit a lot using flexible pavement: paving with a mixture of asphalt as the surface layer of soil and graded material as the underlayment. Hence, he suggests the construction use the rigid pavement.
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“Unlike flexible pavement, rigid pavement uses cementitious coatings as its binder, and a concrete slab placed at the bottom as the base material. So it looks like a cast. Nevertheless, it must consider how thick it is, how much vehicle traffic per day, and how much vehicle traffic data per day,” added he.
The lecturer also said that average daily traffic plays an essential role in the age of roads constructed. Typically, the planned life of rigid pavement can resist 20 years compared to the flexible pavement, which must be maintained every 3 to 4 years.
Despite it, each option of road type has its own advantages and disadvantages. For example, rigid pavement requires huge initial capital to construct a few road sections regarding its weakness. Meanwhile, flexible pavement needs less budget.
“The construction of rigid pavement also takes a long time but lasts longer. I don’t think 3 to 4 months are enough since we have to fix the foundation. It means we must know the soil-bearing capacity,” the civil engineering lecturer of UMM added.
Last but not least, Alik says that trans road repair is not the responsibility of the regional government but also the central one. It’s inseparable from the fact that trans road belongs to the country, so its maintenance and construction must be carried out directly from the nation. (imh/tri/wil)
