Roads play a very important part in any nation’s infrastructure.  Their construction and maintenance, and the vehicles that travel over them, consume large amounts of energy.  This energy use results in atmospheric emissions, the reduction of a non-renewable resource, and other environmental impacts.  Any reduction of the lifetime energy use associated with roading, even if only by a small percentage, will have significantly positive implications for sustainable development.

Concrete roads are durable and safe.  They are considerably less prone to wear and tear defects like rutting, cracking, stripping, loss of texture, and potholes that can occur with flexible pavement surfaces.  This low maintenance requirement is one of the principal advantages of concrete pavements.  There are well-designed concrete pavements that have required little or no maintenance well beyond their 40-year design lives.  Less maintenance also means fewer traffic delays, a huge advantage on some of our already congested highways.