Durable Futuristic Roundabout in the City of Eindhoven, the Netherlands

The main traffic entrance to the city of Eindhoven is the connection with the surrounding A2 Highway. This entrance of the city is a large two lane roundabout with a diameter of 97m.A lot of heavy trucks use this roundabout. The asphalt pavements of this roundabout showed severe rutting, cracks and surface damage. Therefore this roundabout had to be reconstructed. In the city of Eindhoven are several roundabouts of this size and all have the same problems with the asphalt pavements. Therefore the road department made a few roundabouts with a so called combination layer. This is a porous asphalt mix filled with a polymer-cement slurry. After two years of use under traffic these pavements already show severe damage. Therefore the road department was looking for a more sustainable pavement type. Because there are good experiences with concrete pavements on roundabouts in The Netherlands this was one of the options. Since this is one of the most important traffic points in the city of Eindhoven the existing roundabout could not be closed for traffic. Therefore the execution had to take place in phases. Because of the evenness specifications the traffic lanes were paved with a slipformpaver. Also the concrete curbs were paved with the slipformpaver. The contractor also had to deal with different width of the several lanes. On the main traffic lanes normal grey concrete was used. On the separation lane around the inner island a black coloured and pattern imprinted concrete was used. The separation of the driving lanes is realized with inserted LED lights which gives a very special effect, especially at nighttimes. This paper reports about the backgrounds, the pavement design, the concrete mixes used, the specifications, the execution with a slipformpaver and the special lighting effects used.