Atrocious road surface on London's M4 elevated section

[Basil Jet]

It's been this bad for at least fifty years, and it must have been resurfaced at least 10 times during that period. Someone told me that the elevated route on Seattle's airport motorway is similarly bad. I guess what I'm feeling are expansion joints, but is there really no way to make them less noticeable? If the slabs were edged with interlocked combs like the steps on travelators, would that not allow expansion joints which were barely felt, or is it impossible to make interlocked combs which can take the weight of a lorry?

 

[SWT_USER]

AIUI, there are far bigger problems than the road surface with that flyover. The whole thing is crumbling to bits and constant roadworks over the past few years don't seem to have improved matters.

I'm not sure if there is an agreed plan for it's long term future or if the can just gets kicked down the road every few years because it's politically difficult to deal with.

 

[Russel]

The concrete sections of the M25 aren't too pleasant either...

 

[DelW]

It's been this bad for at least fifty years, and it must have been resurfaced at least 10 times during that period. Someone told me that the elevated route on Seattle's airport motorway is similarly bad. I guess what I'm feeling are expansion joints, but is there really no way to make them less noticeable? If the slabs were edged with interlocked combs like the steps on travelators, would that not allow expansion joints which were barely felt, or is it impossible to make interlocked combs which can take the weight of a lorry?

There are such joints, e.g. scroll down to "finger joints" on this page:

Roadway Expansion Joints | MAURER SE. All rights reserved.

www.maurer.eu

(photos of proprietary expansion joints for road bridges).

I imagine cost would be the main factor against their use at every span of a viaduct, but it's also possible that they would apply loadings to the structure for which it wasn't designed.

 

[RichJF]

Any non-smart motorway has atrocious road surfaces in my area.