Workers lay out stone tiles on the pavement of Nguyen Trai Street, Thanh Xuan District, Hanoi. (Source: VNA)Hanoi (VNS/VNA) -Hanoi streets are getting a facelift: authorities have begun paving degradedstreets with natural stone as part of a project to beautify the city andimprove safety for walkers and drivers.
The city will pave 936streets with natural stone in 12 districts across Hanoi from now until 2020.
The move comes as thecity’s pavement continues to degrade, hindering pedestrians and other commutersas well as worsening the city’s image, according to local authorities.
By choosing only onematerial to pave all across the city, the city hopes to ensure consistency andavoid the current mix of stone materials around the streets.
According to experts, thenatural stone’s biggest asset is its reliability. They said it should remainstrong for 50 to 70 years.
The funds to implement theproject will be from the city budget and mobilised from other social sources.
The material’s reliabilitywill hopefully put an end to the rounds of replacements and repairs requiredevery few years on the current pavement material.
Twelve companies have beenselected to provide the stone for the construction and the project isestimated to cost not more than 500,000 VND (22 USD) per square metre.
Vice Chairman of the VietnamConstruction Association Pham Sy Liem said that the use of natural stones topave sidewalks was better than the current practice of using cement blocks orstandard bricks.
However, the paving shouldbe undertaken with careful consideration towards ease of walking forpedestrians and maintaining smooth traffic flow for vehicles.
Stricter management andmore comprehensive infrastructure development were needed to ensure thatnewly-paved streets would not be dug out again by electricity or cable sectorsto put electric lines or cables underground, he said.
He noted that naturalstones should only be used to pave streets that already have comprehensiveinfrastructure development such as streets around Hoan Kiem Lake or Ba DinhSquare. Otherwise, the new sidewalks could be at great risk of being dug upagain.
The municipal ConstructionDepartment said the department would co-ordinate with relevant agencies to makesurveys and appropriate designs on infrastructure projects to ensuredevelopment proceeds but does not result in the destruction of newly pavedsidewalks.
A worker of theConstruction and Environment Ltd. Co, which is working on paving pavementsalong Nguyen Trai street in Thanh Xuan district, told the newspaper that histeam of 20 workers would pave around 200sq m of pavement each day at a cost of 500,000VND (22 USD) per metre, more expensive than paving streets with normal bricks.
A resident in Giai Phong streetin Hai Ba Trung district said the replacements of all pavements by naturalstones was unnecessarily costly because many sidewalks were still in goodcondition. Moreover, "it is quite slippery to walk on natural stones whenit rains," he said.
Nguyen Thi Lan, a resident of Le Trong Tan street, said the use ofnatural stones would make the pavements bright, beautiful and clean. However,she was concerned about potential waste if the pavements are dug again for therepair or construction of water pipes or telephone cables.
Pavements of Le Trong Tan street were paved with natural stones ona trial basis beginning in May last year. However, natural stones on some partsof the pavements cracked or broke into small pieces.
Nguyen Dinh Nghi, former Deputy Head of the Vietnam Institute forConstruction Materials, said apart from natural stones, other kinds ofabsorbent materials could also be used for pavements to prevent flooding.
Many developing countries chiefly use terrazzo, a compositematerial, to pave streets in urban areas. Terrazzo consists of chips of marble,quartz, granite and glass or other suitable material. One advantage of thismaterial is preventing slips, according to Nghi.
Terrazzo made strictly following European standards are beautiful,high quality and reliable, as well as much cheaper than natural stones, hesaid.
A representative from the Construction Material Production andTrade Co. Ltd, one of the companies chosen to provide natural stones for theproject, told the newspaper that using natural stones is more expensive thanterrazzo. Terrazzo costs around 70,000-100,000 VND (3-4.4 USD) per squaremetre, one-fifth the price of natural stones.-VNA
VNA
