Highways and Its Development Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards covering the historical development, planning challenges, economic principles, and technical survey methods involved in highway and bridge engineering.

Highways

Major road networks designed to efficiently move people, goods, and services between places.

Highway Development

The entire process of planning, designing, building, and maintaining highway systems.

Ancient Roads

Roads with hard surfaces that first appeared around $3500\text{ B.C.}$ in Mesopotamia.

Roman Roads Construction

A three-layer system consisting of small broken stones, stones mixed with mortar (compacted firmly), and large stone blocks set with cement mortar.

Jerome Tresaguet ($1716$–$1796$)

Known as the Father of Modern Road Building, he improved roads in $18\text{th}$-century France by adding better drainage, a road slope (crown), and reducing foundation depth to $25\text{ cm}$.

Thomas Telford ($1757$–$1834$)

A Scottish engineer who refined road building by using larger foundation stones ($3$ inches thick, $5$ inches wide, and $7$ inches high) and keeping the subgrade flat with a slight slope for drainage.

John Loudon McAdam ($1755$–$1836$)

A Scottish engineer who developed the Mcadam Road, a cheaper method using compacted layers of small stones without large foundation blocks.

Saxon Laws

Laws before the Norman conquest requiring people to repair roads and bridges, maintain castles, and help defend against invasions.

The King's Highway

A sacred designation after the Norman Conquest of England where encroaching on road space was considered an offense against the king.

Automobile Age (Philippines)

The period from the $1960\text{s}$ to the early $1980\text{s}$ when cars became a necessity and rural road development was prioritized under the slogan ‘This nation is on wheels.’

Financial Planning Difficulties

A challenge where government spending on foreign debt payments limits funds, causing road projects to be delayed or shelved.

Political Planning Difficulties

Issues where road plans are altered for political interests, involving conflicting laws, political influence, and expectations of financial ‘SOP’ from contractors.

The Planner

A professional who acts as a coordinator, mediator, and impartial negotiator to gather input from affected groups and incorporate feedback into highway decision-making.

Pay as You Go Principle

The practice of using tax revenues to fund infrastructure projects proportionally across regions; it results in slow progress compared to foreign borrowing.

Remote Sensing

The science and art of obtaining measurements using photography, often from aerial images, to provide data for highway planning and analysis.

Right of Way

The specific width of land identified early in the planning process as necessary for road construction to avoid property disputes.

Photogrammetric Mapping

The use of vertical aerial photographs with overlaps (end lap over 50\text{\\%} and side lap) to produce stereoscopic views for $3\text{D}$ analysis and mapping.

Orthophotographs

Aerial photographs corrected for scale and tilt so that distances are accurate, functioning similarly to a map.

Oblique Photographs

Aerial images taken at an angle, particularly useful for providing detail in flat terrains or steep cliffs where vertical images may lack depth.

Reconnaissance Survey (Stage I)

A survey of the entire area to identify possible routes between terminal points using small-scale aerial photographs and land use studies.

Preliminary Survey (Stage III)

A survey designed to gather detailed data for initial design and alignment, using large-scale topographic maps created via photogrammetry or ground surveys.

Location Survey (Stage IV)

The final stage of a location survey where engineers stake out the right-of-way, highway alignment, and structures for construction.

Skewed Bridges

Bridges that cross a waterway at an angle; they are generally more expensive and harder to design and build than right-angle bridges.

Plans

Engineering drawings of a highway or bridge project that include horizontal alignment (top view) and profile (original elevation vs. grade line).

Specifications

Written instructions and conditions that form a legal part of the contract between the contractor and the highway agency.

Standard Specifications

Documents that apply to projects implemented by administration and cover subjects that repeatedly occur in agency work.

Special Provisions

Additional modifications to standard specifications that cover peculiar items specific to a particular project.