It requires less maintenance and is more durable than bituminous roads. Concrete road base and surfacing has a service life of over 50 years with no major maintenance required. Compare this to bituminous roads, which need to be resurfaced every 7 to 12 years. Also note that many other problems associated with conventional surfacing, like oil spills softening the road, storm water scouring, heavy vehicles braking and turning, causing shoving of the surfacing and some other problems of conventional road surfacing, are eliminated when using UTRC.
Heavy Vehicle Simulator (HVS) tests were done by Gautrans and the CSIR which did not fail after more than 30 million E80’s.
The failures found in conventional concrete, as was built many years ago, (see history), were all but eliminated, when using UTRC. This is mainly due to the continuous design of the reinforcing steel, as well as many other adjustment and additions to the first effort as made by Adrian Bergh at the CSIR.
The HVS tests have proven that the heavy truck and even overloaded trucks to a certain extent, can be accommodated by the UTRC roads.