Betar

Road interchange with multilevel lanes at Area 18, Lilongwe

• Location: Area 18, Lilongwe, Malawi
• Solution: Bridges, Infrastructure and Transport
• Type: Road bridges, Roadways and railways
• Promoter: Malawi Roads Authority
• Client: Mota Engil - Africa
• Scope: Structural Design, Highway Track, Geotechnical, Traffic and Hydrological Studies, Earthmoving, Pavements, Drainage, Signaling and Safety Projects
• Project: 2019
• Construction: 2020
• Photography: Mota Engil - Africa
• Contractor: Mota Engil - Africa
• Ver no Google Maps

The interchange in roundabout between Road M1 and the Presidential Way Avenue at the 18th Area, in Lilongwe was a heavy traffic road junction of the capital, with very low service and incapable to accomplish city’s growth. This road junction has a huge importance as it permits the distribution of regional traffic towards North, especially for heavy-duty vehicles. And also there was an intention to construct in a short-term a by-pass road to travel around the urban area of the city.

Thus, the Government has decided to construct a multilevel solution with high capacity and had a particular intention of “clover” interchange layout.

But the orography is tilted and the lateral area is urbanized. Those critical factors have restrained the options for the layout.

Therefore, BETAR has developed a few micro-simulations models in a specific software to compare alternatives and to adjust geometric parameters of the solution, finding the one that solves all main restrains and traffic problems.

The multilevel road interchange is composed by slopes which arise in looping movements allowing, all changings of direction without neither interference between vehicles or stops.

To establish the multilevel lane interchange between the main roads the solution has evolved integrating a viaduct of 2 spans with 20.60m spans. The deck was designed with precast beams to speed up the work and for quality control reasons.