Road

A first-of-a-kind trial now underway seeks to apply the wonder material graphene's impressive attributes to one of the UK's major thoroughfares, by deploying it in a road resurfacing project along a stretch of the A1.

Researchers have demonstrated how patterns of string carefully laid out by robotic arms can be used to bind asphalt together in place of environmentally damaging bitumen, resulting in greener roads that are also easier to recycle after use.

Scientists at RMIT University are continually coming up with ways to work recovered waste items into high-performing road materials. The latest is made with help from shredded face masks and they claim it offers some unique engineering advantages.

A new Yale study suggests that asphalt, so ubiquitous in our modern cities, continues to release a wide range of chemicals into the air long after it's laid down – and it gets up to three times worse on hot days.

After wastewater such as sewage has been processed at water treatment plants, a sandy grit is typically left over. And while that grit usually ends up in landfills, it could soon instead be used in a more eco-friendly pothole repair material.

A team of engineers in Australia has come up with a new recipe for a road construction material that draws on two huge sources of waste, while offering the strength and flexibility required to handle heavy traffic.

Everyone knows that walking on soft sand is more difficult than walking on a hard sidewalk. By the same token, MIT scientists are now suggesting that if road surfaces were to be made stiffer, large trucks would use less fuel.

Archaeologists have used laser technology to map a 100-km (62-mile) Maya stone road that could have been built 1,300 years ago to help with the invasion of an isolated city in modern-day Mexico at the command of the warrior queen Lady K’awiil Ajaw.

The sodium chloride that's commonly used to de-ice highways is harmful to the environment, plus it corrodes both road materials and vehicles' metal bodies. There may soon be a kinder, gentler alternative, though – made from discarded grape skins.

​When it comes to recycling plastic waste, the Dutch are a pretty inventive bunch. We've seen office furniture fashioned from Amsterdam's canal waste, and plastic trash street furniture too. Now the first cycle path constructed using recycled plastic has opened in the municipality of Zwolle.​

The Swedish Transport Administration has just opened a 2-km (1.2-mi) stretch of electrified road that works like slot cars. The project, dubbed eRoadArlanda, involves embedding electric rails into the road surface to power electric vehicles through a contact arm hanging down from under the car.

It's getting to the point where it seems like adding a dash of graphene can improve just about anything. The latest example is something you probably wouldn't expect to benefit from the addition of the wonder material – asphalt.