Paved roads in Scranton have a variety of insults that other areas of the nation don’t suffer. For one thing, the freezing and thawing that the North-East experiences leads to “wasting events”, as they say in geological circles. Water expands as it freezes and acts as a wedge, turning tiny cracks and imperfections in paved roads into major cracks and potholes.
Then, there’s mine subsidence. The “Anthracite Capital of the World” is riddled with abandoned mines. The land here would look like Swiss cheese if it were cut open and displayed in a big hunk. Add to those giant worm-holes the eroding effects of underground streams and rivers, and you have sudden, catastrophic drops in ground level. They’re called mine subsidence, but they’re really more like trap doors that suddenly spring open. One day, the ground is solid and seemingly substantial. The next, it’s 30 feet lower than it was.
Add to that the wear and tear of several centuries of traffic, which has become much more weighty in the last century. Original roadbeds that were meant for cart and wagon traffic now have to bear up to 40 tons of tractor-trailer loads and heavy construction equipment that was unimaginable back in the Good Old Days.
Now compound the problem with speed. Today’s roads are traveled at speeds which would have been the stuff of fantasy in the days before asphalt, motor cars and trucks. Roaring ahead at even a mere 25 miles per hour (40 kph) will do damage to a road that our forebearers did not have to deal with. Old-fashioned Macadam roads simply cannot stand up to the gusts of wind that faster traffic generates.
Tarmac was one road paving solution to the problem (covering macadam with tar). Asphalt paving became the Gold Standard for permanent roadways in the mid 20th Century. Concrete paving for high-speed, high traffic roadways was popularized during the growth of the Interstate Highway System.
Scranton Paving Contractors deal with all of these problems and solutions on a daily basis. Visit http://vincerunza.com/scranton/contractors/paving/, and see which one decided to be more than just another construction zone in the road!





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