Austrian Construction Company to Pay Motorway Repair after Faulty Construction

The damaged section of the M30 motorway must be repaired and returned to traffic by the end of October, said the Minister of Construction and Transport at a public forum in Szikszó (eastern Hungary).

János Lázár said that the cost of the works would reach HUF 5 billion (EUR 12,4 million) and that Strabag would have to bear the entire cost as a guarantee repair. The minister said that the guarantee would be enforced. The contractor has already started the works in the last few days. The minister said that experts of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics had been called in to help find the fault, because they did not believe the contractor’s claim that the problem had arisen.

The Szikszó section of the M30 motorway was closed on February 17 last year by the operator, the Hungarian Concession Infrastructure Development (MKIF), after the road structure shifted in several places and the pavement cracked. As to the cause of the failure, the minister said

there was a continuous water leakage in the subsoil that had not been treated. Therefore, hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of soil have to be removed and then rebuilt.

At the forum, Lázár apologized to everyone who suffered damage because of the closed section of the motorway. In response to a question, he confirmed the possibility of compensating those who bought a motorway sticker in Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén county but could not use it.

 

He stressed that 354 billion forints (EUR 880 million) were spent on the construction of the M30, which is why he regrets that the first technical failure occurred six months after the opening of the motorway.

Lázár underlined that they were aware that the closure of the affected section of the motorway would put a heavy burden on Highway 3. To facilitate traffic, the ministry will create a temporary extra lane at the junction of the main road 3 and the road 37 at the roundabout in Arnót (near Miskolc, eastern Hungary), at its own expense, so that people coming from road 3 can go directly to Miskolc and the M30 on-ramp. The works will start in March and the extra lane will be ready for use in early April.

At the forum, József Pántya, Deputy State Secretary for Road and Railway Construction at the Ministry of Construction and Transport, presented the technical solution to the participants. He said that as part of the works, the slipped section would be demolished in the coming period and replaced by 755 reinforced concrete columns, each 20-24 meters long and 60 centimeters thick. The embankment, the entire track structure, and the three layers of asphalt can then be rebuilt.

Via MTI; Featured image: Wikipedia