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Sustainability Issues in Road Construction and Use

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Transportation".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 August 2020) | Viewed by 14603

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Department of Civil Building and Environmental Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome, 00185 Rome, Italy
Interests: road pavements; road materials; asphalt; unbound materials; recycling
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Sustainability is an approach that involves different business practices around the world, with some indices pursuing an integrated approach to assessing sustainability performance. Not only public agencies but also private companies focus on sustainability issues to enhance their long-term potential. In 2000, the United Nations promoted the United Nations Global Compact initiative to encourage sustainable and socially responsible policies in businesses worldwide. According to the initiative, “business should support a precautionary approach to environmental challenges, undertake initiatives to promote environmental responsibility and encourage the development and diffusion of environmentally friendly technologies”. These positions stimulate both industrial competition looking for technologies ensuring environmentally-friendly solutions and political initiatives to promote effective and real results.

The experience to date reveals the importance of implementing this approach in the road sector and assessing its externalities in order to pursue different, often conflicting goals: Economic, environmental, and social issues that could interfere with needs of future generations should be investigated. Both the construction and use of roads have a range of impacts; therefore, it is important to assess the sources of their burdens to adopt correct mitigation technologies and policies. Therefore, the present Special Issue involves all activities from cradle to grave of a road infrastructure: models to assess atmosphere emissions and identify low-impact techniques; strategies to manage the traffic demand for a given service level; studies on innovative, “green” materials; procedures, laboratory, and in situ tests to use secondary raw materials in road construction; procedures to increase passengers’ and workers’ safety; technologies to prevent and minimize the mechanical, social, and economical consequences of accidents; technology challenges for energy efficiency of vehicles; and all analyses aimed at pursuing sustainable development challenges.

This Special Issue, entitled “Sustainability Issues in Road Construction and Use”, addresses the most important topics in these very frontiers and the way they could be implemented.

Prof. Dr. Antonio D'Andrea
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Sustainable road transport
  • Environmental impact
  • Road materials
  • Road design
  • Road construction
  • Road maintenance
  • Low-impact vehicles
  • Life cycle analysis

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

12 pages, 3631 KiB  
Article
Road User Costs for Highway Construction Projects Involving a Lane Closure
by Jaehyun Choi
Sustainability 2020, 12(8), 3084; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12083084 - 12 Apr 2020
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3923
Abstract
While for years most American State Highway Agencies (SHAs) have performed Road User Cost (RUC) calculations, no uniformity from state to state has been established. There is scant research available that documents the testing and validation of existing RUC calculation methods for highway [...] Read more.
While for years most American State Highway Agencies (SHAs) have performed Road User Cost (RUC) calculations, no uniformity from state to state has been established. There is scant research available that documents the testing and validation of existing RUC calculation methods for highway rehabilitation projects. Especially scarce are studies addressing the unique problem of accurately calculating RUC in the event of lane closures. This research addresses this problem by describing and comparing two methods of making such calculations: A manual method developed by the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI), and adopted by many other state agencies, such as the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT), and a commercial software package. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability Issues in Road Construction and Use)
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27 pages, 15971 KiB  
Article
Problems Encountered during a Railway Tunnel Excavation in Squeezing and Swelling Materials and Possible Engineering Measures: A Case Study from Turkey
by Ebu Bekir Aygar and Candan Gokceoglu
Sustainability 2020, 12(3), 1166; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12031166 - 6 Feb 2020
Cited by 28 | Viewed by 9063
Abstract
The T3 railway tunnel—under construction within the scope of the Bursa-Yenişehir high-speed train project—is located in northwestern Turkey and has a length of 1250 m. The tunnel is being constructed entirely in silty clay/clayey silt, sand, and clay units, and it is designed [...] Read more.
The T3 railway tunnel—under construction within the scope of the Bursa-Yenişehir high-speed train project—is located in northwestern Turkey and has a length of 1250 m. The tunnel is being constructed entirely in silty clay/clayey silt, sand, and clay units, and it is designed in accordance with the principles of weak ground tunneling described by the new Austrian tunneling method (NATM). When the tunnel excavations began in 2013, during and after portal excavations, a failure occurred at the entrance of the tunnel; thus, a revision of the support systems became mandatory. While the excavation works proceeded after the revision phase, a collapse occurred again at the tunnel face where the overburden thickness was low. This study presents the mechanisms of the collapse that took place at the portal location and in the middle of the tunnel. The proposed tunnel support systems and their numerical analyses are also discussed, because the case is interesting for the tunnel community and will inform future tunnel construction work. For this reason, the relationship between portal excavation and tunnel excavation stability is described. Consequently, tunnels excavated through weak ground conditions are considered, and the importance of considering the face stability of tunnels in tunneling studies is underlined. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability Issues in Road Construction and Use)
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