Latrun Road (Highway 3)
Highway 3, the only concrete roadway in Israel, connects Latrun with Highway 40 and significantly shortens travel time in the area.
Highway 3, the only concrete roadway in Israel, connects Latrun with Highway 40 and significantly shortens travel time in the area.
Highway 3 (Latrun) connects Latrun with a chain of agricultural communities (kibbutzim and moshavim) from the south and ends at Highway 40 near Ashkelon. Since the opening of Highway 6, this road has seen heavy congestion, necessitating its expansion to four lanes. Shapir saw this project as an opportunity for innovation, thus creating the first and only concrete road in Israel.
Concrete roads have been proven in Europe to be more economical and durable than asphalt roads and require less maintenance. Shapir is the only Company in Israel to have mastered the technology of concrete road construction. The thickness of the concrete road is the same as the asphalt road, but its cost is half as low due to less costly raw materials. The cost of building and paving Highway 3 was considerably lower, and we succeeded in making it even less expensive due to the fact that we manufactured the concrete independently in a concrete factory that we built, especially for paving the road.
Shapir engineers used an advanced smooth pavement and other new technologies to lay the section of Highway 3 between the Latrun Junction and Nachshon. In addition to the significant savings in the construction phase, there are also considerable savings in the maintenance part since asphalt requires repair every five years. In comparison, the Latrun-Nachshon concrete road did not need repair for 20 years.
