Primary publication: BauPortal May 2010

Summary: As a minister in Weimar, Goethe was also head of the highway construction commission. Were he alive today, he might perhaps have used his Easter Walk as an opportunity to draw our attention to the first part of a tragedy that becomes all too apparent when the winter is over, and the word “brook” is replaced with “road”.
The aim of road construction is to provide a long-lasting road surface for carrying traffic. As such, the trafficloads on the carriageway are not the reason for the undesirable reactions in the pavement structure, resulting in permanent damage, but merely the trigger for these reactions even under weather conditions that today
are described as extreme and in the past used to be considered normal.
A society’s future economic prospects depend on the efficiency of its transport system and the competitivenessof its mobility economy. A comparative analysis of the demand for the construction of new publicly financed roads and the nationwide costs for maintaining traffic areas on the one hand and the financial straits in which
the Federal Government and the German states find themselves on the other makes it clear that the pressure on budgets can only be eased in the medium term by improving quality. The aim must be to achieve long service lives while simultaneously keeping maintenance costs to a minimum. Quality can be achieved only if a systematic attempt is made to strive for homogeneity.