Ultra-fast road repairs or 'veni vidi vici' in Songjiang

A longtime Italian friend of mine, Mario, functions also as my personal harpsichord and windpipe organ builder who usually picks me up at Genoa airport, whence, 3 years ago, Mario apologized for the messy roadworks we passed as we discussed the restoration of my rare anno 1795 barrel pipe organ that, quite possibly, is the only one in the whole of China.

Upon frequenting Genoa a year later, the said (minor) roadworks had still not been completed and, quite frankly, I could not see much progress as we snail-paced along the single lane with a road "speed" of single digits kilometers per hour and a long queue of vehicles in front of us.

I could then not resist mentioning to Mario that in China, several kilometers of city roadways and, indeed, highways, are often provided with a new 3 or 4cm thick road surface overnight, with a minimum of inconvenience to the mobile public.

The usual modus operandi is that an impressive train of road repair machinery is at the ready at around 11pm.

A road surface milling machine then rips up the old tarmac the debris of which is scooped up by a conveyor belt contraption and carted away in a waiting truck.

Then a gravel mixture is deposited, evenly spread out and compacted by a super heavy "steam" roller weighing several tons, followed by the next machine in the train that deposits a layer of bitumen hot mix that is finally compacted and levelled out by steam roller number two.

Finally, in its wake comes a road marking machine that applies yellow and white lines and zebra crossing markings where required and, hey, presto, early birds can use the freshly resurfaced road-deck by 6:00am often without having been aware of the beehive of activity the night before.

Equally fast, many city roads in Songjiang are currently being furnished with new curbing in less than a week, which involves slicing the road surface with a diamond saw, ripping out the old curbing and replacing and aligning the new curbing blocks as well as the laying of the accompanying filler tiles.

Truly this too, is a manifestation of meticulous planning, supervision, and teamwork with a minimum of inconvenience to ambulant public.

Well done Songjiang!

See photos.

The author is a freelancer in Shanghai. The views are his own.