OREANDA-NEWS. August 19, 2011. “With the help of the European Union, we have been able to renovate several important roads and junctions in Estonia in the recent years, and the road section of Liiapeksi-Loobu is definitely one notable project in that sequence,” said Jaano Vink, the Chairman of the Management Board of Nordecon AS, reported the press-centre of Nordecon.

“On the one hand, state investments helped Estonian building companies to survive the economic recession. On the other hand, attracting foreign investments primarily depends on logistics, which is why roads and infrastructure are the keywords that can help to heat up the economy again.”

According to Erkki Suurorg, Member of the Management Board and Head of Group Function Civil Engineering of Nordecon AS, updating the road network and improving its safety are of the greatest importance for road users. “Due to the rough winters of the past few years, the old road was in a significantly worse condition than described in the project,” said Erkki Suurorg. “Frost heave cracks in the pavement and the excessive moisture content of the track bed made it necessary to use a special reinforcement net and construct a drainage system. These problems also suspended the duration of construction works.”

“According to the building design project, the whole section was covered with a three-layer asphalt concrete pavement. An entirely new track bed was built on a section of 1.9 kilometres,” described Erkki Suurorg. “The existing embankment was supplemented with a new granolithic road bed and new layers of asphalt on a section of 10 km. On a section of 8.4 kilometres, the existing asphalt pavement was milled, frost heave zones were reinforced by means of a metal net, and only after that new layers of asphalt were installed. The total areas of the top layer of asphalt concrete and granolithic road bed constructed were 250,000 m2 and 165,000 m2 respectively.”

“We also improved the water regime at the construction site – for that purpose, we built 3.5 kilometres of drainage and also reconstructed the bridges of Valgejoe and Loobu,” noted Erkki Suurorg. “In addition to that, we illuminated the surroundings of the Loobu overpass by means of 20 lighting installations. The renovated road section remains under two regions of the Road Administration – 13.3 km belong under the northern region and 7.0 km under the eastern region. The eastern section was in a significantly poorer condition before the renovation. The road construction projects of recent years have helped to harmonise the Estonian road network and the road section of Liiapeksi-Loobu also plays an important role in that.”

Works on the road section will not end with opening the section for traffic, as the Road Administration has ordered the construction of additional drainage in the immediate vicinity of the bridge of Loobu. Likewise, side roads will be covered with the leftovers of milled asphalt.