Paper presented at the 33rd Annual Southern African Transport Conference 7-10 July 2014 "Leading Transport into the Future", CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa.
Low cost road (LCR) initiatives are often concerned with supporting of the sustainable
improvements of roads and creating the basic access to support poverty reduction
initiatives in rural communities. In southern Africa low cost roads are those built with thin
asphalt surfacings for low volume road traffic and also referred to as improved unpaved
roads. LCR can be built or kept maintained cost effectively by using appropriate types of
equipment suited to small-scale contractors. The objectives of this essay are to evaluate
alternative pavement solutions for low volume roads. In order to evaluate the performance
of different LCR, the KENLAYER program was used to evaluate the pavements. The
deformation responses of unpaved and surface treated roads before and after surface
treatments, at critical locations (bottom of base, top of selected subgrade and top of
subgrade) are nearly the same; that means, the use of surface treatment over unpaved
roads, does not increase the structural capacity, but it may only improve the riding quality
and the drainage of the roads. The comparison of the cost of different LCR different
pavement models (untreated, treated with ECOLOPAVI and treated with cement) found
that the roads treated with ECOLOPAVI may cost less. Previous research has investigated
the use of the ECOLOPAVI road treatment solution for improving roads and suggested, for
consistency, further studies may be needed with an aim to investigate its use as an LCR
alternative in Mozambican roads.
