Had the pleasure of a drive on the M25 yesterday, specifically the bit just south of Heathrow which is concrete and not tarmac.
It is so noisy, and the surface made me feel like I had a puncture as it was throwing the car around.
So why do they use it?

Assume it’s cheaper or quicker to install(?). The M1/A1 link road is the same. It’s awful

It lasts loads longer.

Congratulations on driving on your first concrete motorway!

So why do they use it?

It was probably cheaper.

Used to be more of them down toward the south coast.

It was sort-of exotic and exciting, you knew you were nearly at the sea.

as above, its not cheaper, but it lasts way better, and avoiding roadworks on the busiest sections of motorway infrastructure in the country is a good thing

i would assume cost saving and its more hardy than tarmac?

The stretch of A27 between chichester and havant used to be all concrete. I think the multiple noise complains from surrounding villages made them put a think later of tarmac over the top of it.

I believe they were built during the (last) oil crisis in the 70s when there wasn’t enough around for tarmac and concrete was the alternative.. watch this space!

There’s a short section on the A19 south near Hartlepool. Annoyingly they have just spent ages/millions upgrading the bit just after it to 3 lanes and fully resurfaced it but for whatever reason they left the 1/4 mile or so before it as concrete.

I thought ground conditions weren’t always suitable for flexible road surfaces like tarmac and they had to use rigid surfaces like concrete – albeit with tarmac over the top for noise sometimes.

The A1/M1 link certainly crosses some (very) old mine workings and I think the the ground is sustainable at that point.

EDIT – I think I’m wrong

It was also probably more pleasant to drive back in the ’70s when cars had smaller wheels and narrower, high profile tyres to absorb some of the buzz

I used to wonder why the French roads seemed to be so much better. I did read that UK roads suffer a greater diversity of conditions (frost etc) , I also read that in the past some kind of deal was stitched up with the cement industry resulting in the UK using archaic technology. Who knows?

Concrete roads are low wear and low drag, perfect for high use straight roads. When new they should be smoother than a tarmac road and they stay like that for a lot longer. The downside is that they don’t disperse water efficiently and are very noisy. The main issue though is that they are expensive to repair so are never done well leading to bumps at the joints and the expansion joints failing.

While not motorway but dual carriageway there are two in South Wales that are used as test roads. One is between Abergavenny and Raglan which is currently being used to test some acoustic fence and a new type of surface dressing for wear, the other one is the section of the A465 between Resolven and Neath. This section was resurfaced back in the 90’s to German standards and is incredibly smooth and showing very little sign of wear. They’ve both been used for testing as they have consistent traffic levels and weather patterns so are repeatable. There’s also a bit of the M4 by Bridgend that has white and yellow lines across a small section of lane 1 the test for wear and weather resistance for the same reason.

The M1/A1 link road is the same. It’s awful

Apart from where it passes residential areas where they had to put a noise-suppressed surface down. It’s disconcerting sometimes going from ROAR>whirr>ROARROARROAR>whirr all the time.

Meant to be longer lasting but when they come to be maintained it’s more difficult and costly. Don’t use it anymore for that and for noise pollution reasons.

incidendally, a bunch of the suburban roads around here (built in the 30s) are concrete. I can’t imagine length of life had much to do with it, maybe it was the new big thing? they do look a little industrial though

There’s a short section on the A19 south near Hartlepool. Annoyingly they have just spent ages/millions upgrading the bit just after it to 3 lanes and fully resurfaced it but for whatever reason they left the 1/4 mile or so before it as concrete.

@northernmatt as I read the thread title that was the 1st stretch of concrete road that came to mind, you beat me to it.
I bloody hate that bit of road.

This section was resurfaced back in the 90’s to German standards and is incredibly smooth and showing very little sign of wear

There’s a road we used to take on the way to the Nurburgring a few years ago. Above a certain speed the resonance of the bumps started to make the less well fixed parts of cars fall off.
The cover fell off my rear wiper and my friends Skyline had a headlight come loose.

Can’t remember the exact story but apparently it was an old tank route or something like that. A truly horrible concrete road.

I can remember when the M54 was first being built, which started life as an isolated stretch sort of bypassing Telford (a bonus in itself), that was initially concrete. Dad was a Materials Testing Manager for the then Telford Devt Corporation, and he took us to watch some of the work in progress from an overbridge at what is now Junc6. There were two ruddy great laying machines in use, continually fed by truckmixers, which in turn were running on constant turnaround from the nearby RMC plant to keep the pour going. The project seemed well organised to a 10-year old at any rate, certainly from a distance. The concrete surface on that stretch has been ripped out and replaced in the meantime, but there are other parts of the M54 still with a concrete wearing course even now.

@5lab

I can’t imagine length of life had much to do with it

Au contraire, surely – if the surface and structure have lasted nearly 90 years, then probably length of life had a great deal to do with it?

There’s big chunks of the A50 from Stoke that are surfaced in concert, it’s truly horrible, as is the surface 🤣

I’m sure I read somewhere they were some of the first PFI initiatives so installing the hardest wearing surface for the best return is why they still persist. Obviously noise, safety, spray etc weren’t in the contract.

there is a stretch on the a30 nr okehampton that is horrific in wet conditions compared to the section before and after that is maintained to a modern standards.

Some interesting history from Highways England https://nationalhighways.co.uk/suppliers/concrete-roads/

The later concrete roads were continuosly reinforced, so didn’t need joints and are a bit quieter, but ‘whispercrete’ never really lived up to its name.

In America and some other countries resurfacing the concrete roads is a big business, hence the need for a ‘Grinding and Grooving’ Association https://www.igga.net/ – a great name if nothing else….

There’s a very long stretch* of Interstate 5 in Washington state (not DC!) in the US which is concrete and which is very noisey to drive on – and to make matters MUCH worse, they’ve milled four longitudinal strips in lane one in segments about 4 metres long, 2 metres apart.

I presume this is something to encourage trucks to stay in lane one or keep the drivers awake but it’s like driving with constant Morse Code repeating in the background…🤷‍♂️

* as in multiple hundreds of miles…

Iirc (pub quiz knowledge) tarmac motorways last for ~20years, concrete ~40years.

Well. You learn something every day. I always thought it was something to do with cold war runways and emergency military infrastructure.

There’s big chunks of the A50 from Stoke that are surfaced in concert, it’s truly horrible, as is the surface 🤣

Was going to nention those stretches – used to be the highlight of my weekly work trip to Stoke

There’s big chunks of the A50 from Stoke that are surfaced in concert, it’s truly horrible, as is the surface

filed away in the deepest corners of my brain I vaguely remembered about musical roads, and yes……

There’s loads down here, parts of the m25 as above, plus loads of the M20 around Ashford. Plus our road is a private/unadopted concrete road and has got potholes you could lose a small child in.

I worked on m42 when built in ‘83-4 its concrete and surface was out of spec from new.one of my tasks being to measure the surface irregularities with a rolling straight edge that rang a bell at each failure I’ve pushed that bloody thing miles on all lanes all were crap..the brushed surface being very regular caused much of the traffic noise it’s a terrible surface to drive on

Ah I have the “pleasure” of the J9-J13 concrete stretch of the M25 all the time. It’s super noisy in some cars and creates an amazing whine at 75mph with wide profile tyres – if you ever get that speed on the M25.

Coming round anti-clockwise just as you get off for J9 (where I always get off) the quiet tarmac to J8 starts.