Road Building Project Research Articles

Road Corridors as Real Estate Frontiers: The New Urban Geographies of Rentier Capitalism in Africa

AbstractThis paper draws on research on infrastructure‐led development and urbanisation in Nairobi to explore the new urban geographies of rentier capitalism in Africa. Under the banner of Kenya's Vision 2030 national development strategy, Nairobi's agrarian hinterlands have been transformed by major road building projects. These initiatives have catalysed a peri‐urban property boom characterised by the conversion of agricultural and ranching land into urban real estate and the verticalisation of road corridors. The paper identifies four processes of land transformation driving this real estate market expansion: commodification; speculation; autoconstruction; and assetisation. Adopting a multi‐scalar conjunctural approach, it argues that rentier capitalism in this context is spatialised through the dramatic extension of real estate frontiers along the route of peri‐urban road corridors. Development along these corridors assumes a “grey” character that defies conventional formal–informal distinctions, enabling the extraction of large rentier profits and encouraging the further proliferation of frontier spaces.

Jam-Barrel Politics

Abstract This paper studies the executive-legislative exchange of centrally allocated benefits (jam) for legislative support in Colombia using data from road building projects, legislative roll-call votes, and a leaked database which uncovered the assignment of road contracts to individual legislators. We draw hypotheses from a model in which an executive spreads jam to sway legislators. We document that assigned projects had excess costs, legislators targeted were more likely to be swing voters in congress, and legislators increased their support for the executive after their contracts were signed. The results are driven by legislators representing remote regions and constituencies with weaker political institutions.

E-Waybill Using Experience & Development In Estonian State Road Building

Estonian Transport Administration (ETA) has since 2010y developed digital solutions for monitoring abnormal 52t transport heavy vehicles (HV). Since 2020y we signed the memorandum between 8 different parties for developing bulk material transport digital solutions (e-waybill system) for road building. The focus is to make the logistic more transparent since beginning of the loading point - for the different authorities. The second focus is to make the truck movement corridor visible for the traffic control, avoiding week roads, bridges etc. The final, and the most difficult, is to develop the mass control system, so that there is automated weight info in the e-waybill system visible for the traffic police and for building supervisors etc. We have met with our Association of Estonian Cities and Municipalities and many others, and everyone is very interested of going from paper waybills for faster, cloud based, e-waybill systems, what is also more C02 friendly. This digital e-waybill allows single data entry, and all the rest data with statistics is visible for concerned people. ETA is planning to pilot in 2021y also many road building projects with e-waybill demand. So far, the feedback has been mainly positive from different parties. We have started with our Estonian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications (EMEAC) also wider digitalisation projects concerning the new regulation (EU) 2020/1056 of eFTI for the gross-border transport logistics digitalisation, what must be applied in every member state 21.08.24.

Paths of authority, roads of resistance: Ambiguous rural infrastructure and slippery stabilization in eastern DR Congo

This article uses the concept of the ‘infrastructural frontier’ to trace the linkages between externally financed road building projects and the constitution of eastern DR Congo as a liminal political space at the material edge of the state. This frontier space has two core features: first, the patchy quality of its road infrastructure, which is perpetually rebuilt only to disintegrate again. Second, the transient nature of configurations of authority and control, leading to ‘circulation struggles’ along roads that are never fully functional. These features contribute to the collapse of a clear-cut dichotomy between the presence and the absence of transport infrastructure, but also between spaces of control and spaces of resistance. The constitution of eastern Congo as an infrastructural frontier, we argue, is importantly related to its ‘subversive soils’, whose clayish, sticky substance accelerates road degradation and compounds power projection. The resulting patchiness of both durable road infrastructure and central state control generates a ‘frontier effect’: it invites perpetual external donor interventions to build roads, but these projects never fundamentally upend the infrastructural and political state of affairs. In fact, as we demonstrate, these projects have become crucial to its very constitution. These observations point to the dual temporality of eastern Congo’s ‘perpetual’ infrastructural frontier, where the short-term volatility of circulation struggles is both a product of and reproduces its frontier-ness over the longue durée. Our contribution thus demonstrates the intricate relations between the temporal, material and political qualities of frontier spaces.

Driving development in the Amazon: Extending infrastructural citizenship with political ecology in Bolivia

In this paper, I extend the analytical framework of infrastructural citizenship with political ecology and reorientate analysis to rural geographies, extractive infrastructure and indigenous territorial movements. Drawing from recent fieldwork in Bolivia, I argue that an extended conceptual framework of ‘infrastructural ecological citizenship’ better acknowledges the multiple, changing and contested ways that people and rural places co-exist and how these relationships are being reworked as infrastructure and citizenship are co-constituted. I use this framework to analyse a conflict over road building in an indigenous territory and national park in lowland Bolivia – the Isiboro Sécure Indigenous Territory and National Park ( Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro Sécure; TIPNIS), revealing how the road building project weakened the pre-existing political and material infrastructures that underpinned modes of indigenous territorial citizenship within Bolivia’s Plurinational State, as well as foregrounding how transnational extractive capital has shaped negotiations of territorial place-based citizenship in the TIPNIS. In doing so, I contribute to debates on infrastructural citizenship, resource extraction and sustainable development, revealing the ongoing potency of place-based claims on land and related claims for territorial citizenship.

Machine control systems for leveling areas for road investments

Earthwork is an essential stage in road construction. The proper and efficient performance of earthwork is a necessary condition of a successful execution of a road building project. Earthwork is carried out with suitable machines and implements, which allow mechanisation and acceleration of the task. In order to fully implement these machines, control systems are employed, as these improve the accuracy of the earthwork done, enable machine operators to carry out their work more easily, and support the processing of data. This article describes automated and laser systems used for this purpose. The situation on building sites where such systems are deployed has been analysed. The article contains the results of this analysis.

Realization Processes of Road-building Projects in the Czech Republic: Necessary Information to Execute Processes

Road buildings projects are unique for their typical aspects. These typical aspects are the long-term preparation process (app. 16 years) and the construction phase (app. 4 years). Construction of the road building influences a large area in the country and has a big impact on the environment. Construction road building projects very often suffer from project delays and increasing budget because of many causes. Paper analyses process of obtaining information and other conditions for realization of the road-building projects. This paper describes the main road building project actors and main time schedule delays. After that, the process is analyzed and necessary information are identified. Finally, other necessary conditions for realization process are identified. Realization of the road-building process diagram (focused on documentation) was created and verbally evaluated.

Roads, tribes, and identity in Northeast India

ABSTRACTAlong with military expeditions and social and anthropological surveys, road-building projects were prominent strategies of the British in India when it came to dealing with tribes and territorialization of the frontier regions. Roads for territorial expansion and resource extraction were the core agenda of the colonial project in Northeast India. The post-colonial Indian state on the other hand built roads in the region for securing the borders, promoting national integration, and linking external markets. This article posits that road building has always been an act of power, which has at different times been aimed at smoothening relationships, securing borders, (dis)connecting people, enabling trade, creating spaces of contestation, or diluting boundaries between varied ethnic groups. The article analyzed the colonial state-making project through road construction and linked to the contemporary Indian state approach to infrastructure development in tribal-dominated areas of Northeast India.

Modeling of Waste Material Costs on Road Construction Projects

Material waste is a term from the amount of waste material percentage and is one of the serious problems in the implementation of road construction project. The research objective is to calculate the average percentage of waste material in road construction projects and obtain waste material influencing profit and make a regression model of % material waste to % profit contractors. The data obtained are 158 projects in East and North Kalimantan divided into 51 road building projects and 107 road improvement projects. The percentage of waste material on road building project is B aggregate as the largest (26%) and ready mix concrete (5.3%) as the smallest. The percentage of waste material on road improvement project is B aggregate as the largest (24.2%) and ready mix concrete (6.14%) as the smallest. The influencing waste material on the road construction project is B aggregate, lean concrete and ready mix concrete with regression equation to determine the estimated % profit contractor as a function of % material waste is Y = 7.363 -0.032 X3 - 0.078 X4 - 0.066 X6. The influenced waste material on road improvement projects are cement, B aggregate, and Land Fill with the regression equation to determine the estimated % profit of contractor as a function of % material waste is Y = 8,702- 0,037 X4- 0,054 X5- 0,044 X7.

Between resistance and negotiation: indigenous organisations and the Bolivian State in the case of TIPNIS

A government-driven road-building project, crossing the national park and demarcated indigenous communitarian native land Isiboro Sécure (TIPNIS) in the Bolivian Amazon, has caused considerable debate, divisions and conflict. Based on extensive fieldwork in Bolivia, I examine the conflict between 2011 and 2013, focusing on specific cases of micro-politics with examples of changing strategies, local negotiations and strategic framings in the interactions between the indigenous organisations and the state involved in the conflict. I show that the evolution of the conflict has been affected by these micro-political issues, as well as strategic state projects. Secondly, I focus on how discursive framings have legitimised advanced or marginalised certain solutions, ideas and interests.

Rhythm, Disruption, and the Experience of African Roads

Social scientists working in Africa have begun to take an interest in roads and road building. This interest seems to stem from both theoretical and real-world developments: on the one hand, the “material turn” and the recent explosion of interest in infrastructure are drawing scholars’ attention to the “material substrate” that underlies social life; on the other, roads-focused development funding, low-cost Western credit, and the growing role of Chinese investment on the continent have resulted in a proliferation of road-building projects ranging from small rural feeder roads to large megaprojects. This is a moment of rapid change, and focusing on the concrete manifestations of that change offers scholars a rich focal point for understanding the more diffuse effects of a continental trend to make infrastructure the basis of development.

Losing ground? Extractive-led development versus environmentalism in the Isiboro Secure Indigenous Territory and National Park (TIPNIS), Bolivia

In this paper I explore the relationship between extraction and environmentalism, questioning the extent to which extractive-led development can be resisted and negotiated by mobilizing the rights, legislative frameworks and discourses associated with both indigeneity and protected area conservation. Using a case-study approach and nine months of fieldwork data, I examine a recent dispute over plans to build a road through the Isiboro Secure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS). The road building project began in 2010 without consultation with those living there, routed past pools of natural gas within the park. Opposition to the road was immediate and has been long-lasting, with the issue returning to the public arena in 2015. By examining mobilizations of indigeneity and conservation together, as a socio-environmental strategy set against a dominant extractive agenda, this paper firstly argues that these discursive categories are shifting in response to a dominant extractive frontier and that the TIPNIS conflict is a key moment for (re)determining the political power and meaning of indigeneity, as well as the role and remit of conservation in Bolivia. The conflict is also revealing about post-neoliberalism in practice- helping us to refine how we understand, approach and question post-neoliberal claims and politics.

A new opera house: combining entrepreneurship, garbage can features and windows of opportunity

This study looks at the decision-making that culminated in the building of a new opera house in Oslo. The decision was finally taken in 1999 and the new opera house was finished in 2008. To analyse the decision-making process we use a ‘revised garbage can model’, as presented by Kingdon, which combines the concept of political entrepreneurship through instrumental coalition-building with garbage can features. The winning coalition included actors from parliament and local government but also local private business interests, and it succeeded because it managed to capitalize on a window of opportunity opened by other actors. The main reasons for this were that the opera project was temporarily decoupled from a large road-building project and managed to bring on board interests connected to a more extensive city development in Oslo's inner east city. The relative weakness of the cultural arguments for building an new opera house were evident during the whole process, making the decision to build it a side effect or spin-off from other concerns and interests. The study, which is a single embedded case, is based on a wide range of public documents, interviews and newspaper articles. Points for practitioners Decisions on major public projects may not follow a strict rational trajectory because of imbalances between sectors, side effects and coalition features. This means that ‘weak sectors’ may either accept decision premises from other sectors or engage in coalitions with them to get large projects decided on. The broader actors are able to anchor such large projects, i.e. the more different interests they can fulfil, the larger probability of reaching a decision on them. Such a pragmatic approach may be both crucial in realizing the projects at all and also move the projects away from the original ideas behind them.

“We need progress, progress has to be made:” Road projects, subaltern politics, and uneven development in Nicaragua

The focus of this article is a rural road building project that was celebrated by its promoters as a dream of historic proportions comes true. The significance of this road project rests not in its length or quality, but in its trajectory or the way it encapsulates processes of neoliberal restructuring that link the rescaling of state, processes of transnational territorial integration, and new spaces and subjects of governance. The road project, its participants and promoters, and the meanings they attributed to it, were informed by a much longer, if already translocal “local” history. But forms of neoliberal transnational governmentality provided a framework that allowed some subaltern actors to at once press for the road and articulate a new politics of place, a larger project that they called “progress.” Yet, the very conditions that made the pursuit of progress possible, threatened at every moment to undermine its promise. Thus, this road project provides a unique vantage point for exploring the paradoxes of neoliberal development in terms of longer trajectories of uneven development and subaltern politics.

Estimating Construction Duration for Public Roads During the Preplanning Phase

Estimates of the construction time are of key importance in the early phases of the project – they serve as a basis for the decision whether to commence with planning or not, and are used as input for budgets and programmes. Usually, such estimates base on experience with similar projects completed in the past. This experience may be recorded in the form of mathematical models that relate project characteristics to construction time. The aim of the research was, basing on real-life cases, to develop a model of public road building projects duration. The research comprised collection of input for the analyses, preselection of project features correlated with duration, and construction of three models: a simple statistical regression, a multifactor regression and a regression tree. The models were then compared to each other and to the models presented in the literature with respect to their predictive ability. With the assumed set of potential predictors of construction duration, the regression models were found statistically correct, though not precise enough be used as decision-support tools.

Cost Allocation between Activities that have Caused Delays in a Project Using Game Theory

Abstract Delay is acknowledged as one of the most common, costly, and risky problems, and the source of frequent disputes and claims among owners, clients and consultants leading to lawsuits. Such situations usually involve questioning the facts, causal factors, contract interpretations and quantum of the claims. Questions that emerge are: Does a particular delay warrant an extension of project duration and/or an extra cost? What is the maximal amount that an activity can be held responsible for? How can costs be divided among the activities? Since the ability to make a claim is very much based on what the contract says about delays, contractual documentation needs to reflect the particular nature of each project in order to prevent disputes and claims. This paper proposes a method based on game theory and applies it to a road building project, in order to identify the activities that are responsible for the delay of the project and divide the costs among them. Using the model presented in this paper, a wide variety of project situations can be modelled and placed as contractual obligations. The number of variables, equations, and inequalities needed to model these real-life situations will depend on the complexity of the problem.

The Graaff-Reinet municipal location: Unemployment and poor relief during the Great Depression of 1929-1933

By focusing on a medium-sized rural town in South Africa during the period of the Great Depression broadly resulted in showing the effects and reactions that were, in general, indicative of worldwide trends but with specific regional and local impact. The core focus of this article then being those effects on a further microcosm of urban life, the residents of the Graaff-Reinet municipal “location” (township); the efforts to assist these residents as occupying the lowest rungs of the economic ladder; and the efforts through welfare charities and unemployment/poor relief schemes to alleviate the situation in town. But many of these charitable organisations themselves felt the pinch of “hard times” and as a consequence had to further curtail their poor relief programmes, which lead to further hardships for the “poorest of the poor” in town. This article further examines the efforts by various official bodies, inter alia the Town and Divisional Councils, to provide unemployment relief work via a number of work schemes. Among the latter were the road building projects in town and district, and the brickmaking scheme (which provided all the bricks for the building of the new power station started in June 1934).

The Morrow Brothers of Macomb, Illinois, and the Civilian Conservation Corps

When asked how they first found out about the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)7 four of the five Morrow brothers of central Illinois gave the same answer. My brother told me. It often happened that siblings joined the CCC together and sometimes even served in the same camp together, but the Morrow brothers joined at different times and served at different camps. Their assignments took some of them from the flatland farms of Illinois, to the far north woods of Wisconsin, to the sagebrush deserts of Nevada and Oregon. Their experience collectively provides a unique cross-section of the many ways in which the CCC changed the forests, farmlands, parks, and ranchlands of America. The story of the Morrow brother is also an example of how a new federal relief program became a lifesaver to families across the United States. For many young adults growing up during the Great Depression, the CCC not only gave them a job but also gave them a degree of hope for a better future. Of all the New Deal relief programs the Civilian Conservation Corps can rightly be called one of the most successful. In the nine years of operation ending in 1942 the program enrolled almost three million men. Their mission was an ambitious one. Dubbed Franklin Roosevelt's Tree Army the men were sent to every state as part of a land conservation effort that had never been attempted before on a national scale. Figure 1. The Civilian Conservation Corps was the brainchild of President Franklin D. Roosevelt as part of his New Deal program begun in 1933 to bring relief to an economy in the midst of a crisis. Wth unemployment at 25 percent of the workforce his brain trust of idea men came up with a variety of programs designed to arrest the downward spiral of severe deflation. In a whirlwind of legislative action Roosevelt proposed and Congress approved a number of programs and agencies. Some of them such as the Emergency Banking Act and the Farm Credit Act were aimed at dealing with the financial meltdown resulting from the stock market crash of 1929. Other programs were directed at relief in the form of jobs for unemployed workers. There was the Federal Emergency Relief Administration that made money available to the states to help the jobless. There also was the Civil Works Administration and Public Works Administration that provided money for road building and other construction projects. Then there was the Emergency Conservation Work Act (ECW). Within the ECW was the mechanism for setting up a cadre of young adults who went out to the forests and farm fields of America and engaged in a variety of conservation projects intended to restore the environmental health of the country. The reward for the young CCC men (known as enrollees) was a paying job, free room and board, free medical care, and the chance to learn a trades skill that could become useful in the job market after they left the organization. Changes in eligibility were instituted later in the program but in the beginning enrollment in the CCC was open to any unmarried and unemployed male between eighteen and twenty-five years old. They had to be willing to sign up for a minimum of six months. It was possible to extend the enlistment in six months intervals to a maximum of two years service. They were paid thirty dollars per month with the stipulation that twentyfive dollars would be automatically sent home to their parents. The wages were low even by Great Depression standards, but in the face of crushing joblessness five dollars per month pocket money was still acceptable to thousands of teenagers. Enrollment was brisk.1 Unlike some of the other New Deal programs, the CCC had few detractors. The issue of fair wages for the young men and the impact it would have on adult workers and their labor unions was briefly debated in Washington but quickly died away. Another controversy hung on for years. There was the political problem of who ran the work camps and exercised control over the young men. …

Inorganic Composite Material Based on Fly Ash, Red Residue from Bauxite Ore for Road Building Projects in Vietnam

The paper present solidifying technology based on geopolymer theory of inorganic composite materials from bauxite, red residue from bauxite ore, fly ash and activators for road building projects in Vietnam. This study describes physical properties and chemical compositions of bauxite, red residue, fly ash and the effects of bauxite-red residue-fly ash-activator mixes on the geotechnical properties of inorganic composite materials. Mixture design and testing procedures for inorganic composite materials. New inorganic composite materials have high durability and ability to water resistance. The presentation also show microstructure analysis of inorganic composite materials based on bauxite residue, fly ash and activators by X-ray diffraction, Infrared spectroscopy (IR), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) display high density, and modified microstructure of inorganic composite materials. Construction method of road using inorganic composite materials is also presented.

The treatment of landscape in a Swedish EIA process

Landscape is partly a social matter and has long been one of many aspects investigated in environmental impact work in road and railway planning. The focus on landscape has recently strengthened as Sweden is on its way to ratifying the European Landscape Convention (ELC). It is timely to examine how landscape is handled in environmental impact statement (EIS) preparation in everyday practice, a process involving many actors. This study examines the environmental impact assessment process for a large road project, More Efficient North–South Communications in Greater Stockholm, in terms of the behaviour of three actors, the developer, practitioner, and reviewer. In many respects, the results were rather far removed from several ELC intentions. The deficiencies primarily concerned public participation, comprehensive overview, competence, and stakeholder coordination. These deficiencies originated both inside and outside the environmental impact assessment process of the studied road-building project and cannot be attributed any single stakeholder.