The $37BN Road That's Changing a Country

this is one of the biggest annual migrations of people anywhere on earth millions of indonesians have started leaving urban centers for their home towns and villages ahead of the muslim holiday season of aid every year this piece of infrastructure becomes the backbone of something called mutic a giant homecoming for people all across indonesia traveling back for eid al fatir special services are laid on for trains ferries and planes there's even live coverage of the traffic as hundreds of thousands of people return to their home towns and villages in sumatra it's a major test for indonesia's roads and bridges and it can be a bit of a struggle until now [Applause] this is all thanks to one of the biggest infrastructure projects in southeast asia a network of new routes across indonesia that includes this the trans-sumatra toll road which when it's fully completed will span the entire length of the island weaving through the dense rainforest and tropical conditions of indonesia's second largest island building this massive road is far from easy but it's already having a big impact on sumatra and in more ways than one sumatra is roughly the size of california and it produces nearly a quarter of indonesia's gdp despite that getting around it is not exactly straightforward the island has a small and largely disconnected rail system and traveling by road for any significant distance means you're in for a bit of a bumpy ride that's why in 2015 the indonesian government announced the construction of the imaginatively named trans-sumatra toll road the initial plan to build the turn to mobile forward is to reduce the logistic cost and also reduce the travel time the government also wants to boost the economic growth of the island force the plan was huge the road would stretch for nearly 3 000 kilometers from the port of bakueni in the south to the city of bandaraki in the north the main highway would provide a link from the south to the north of the island and roads would branch off to connect cities along the more remote western coasts as well as towns and ports to the east it wasn't cheap an eye-watering 37 billion dollars was earmarked to complete the project over a nearly decade-long construction period the contract was given to hasa makaya and work began in 2015. now if you were to imagine the ideal conditions to build a road in it would probably look something like this first you take a nice long flat stretch of ground and make sure there weren't any rivers or other roads in the way which you'd have to build bridges over ground conditions are pretty important you'll need strong dry well compacted soil which can stand up well under the weight of all your traffic water's a big no-no as it can seep into the ground and weaken the foundations and you'll need to avoid any extremes of temperature or humidity which can also stress and degrade the quality of the road finally to make your life easier you're going to want to make sure that the land you're building on is clear and obstacle free so you don't have to waste time clearing a path so what's it like in sumatra [Music] huge parts of sumatra are covered in dense rainforest which throws up pretty much every engineering challenge possible this 28 kilometer stretch of road between pemertang cinetar shows the challenges faced this key stretch of the route links the major city of madan to the industrial port of koala tanjung and the nearby tourist hotspot of parapath the path for this bit of the road lay through dense remote rainforest and even just getting the survey done for it was never going to be easy instead of relying on traditional techniques conducted manually on the ground the construction team turns to lidar art elegy that enabled them to create an accurate picture of the road which could then be integrated into infrastructure engineering software provided by bentley systems lidar is similar to radar and sonar in that it emits a pulse towards an object and measures the time for the pulse to return to calculate distance with nearly half a million of these measurements made every second the data that generates can create an incredibly accurate picture of the ground lidar surveys are usually conducted from aeroplanes but that was quickly ruled out as an expensive and impractical option for the trans sumatra road instead the team used a drone mapping the ground with a tolerance of 25 centimeters throughout the route aside from accuracy lidar also has the advantage of using laser pulses rather than sound or radio waves to do its job just like rays of light passing through a forest the light from the laser beam is able to pass through soft vegetation the strength of the light returned is measured to give a three-dimensional picture of the survey area allowing the team to map out the dense jungle the result was a survey time for this stretch of road that ran to just 28 days nearly a hundred days quicker than planned but it's more than just above ground conditions the team had to work through being in humid rainforest and all the ground beneath the construction site is soft soil samples showed areas of soft soil and clay 13 meters deep you don't need to be an engineer to realize that's not the ideal conditions to build a road that hundreds of thousands of people are going to be driving on it will be crossed heavily by the large trucks and then it will create some cracks when the soil are not solid or not giving reinforcement to add stability to the road a fabric membrane known as a geotextile was laid under the six metre embankment this helped water filtration and reduced the stress on the soft underlying earth the geotextile basically consists of the non-woven polyester and polypropylene it's like a layer that can be grown on the top of the soil to prevent the soil displacement it has the ability to separate and reinforce the soil itself now managing a project that includes everything from soil samples to lidar mapping needs a powerful set of tools to make sense of the vast amount of data for this the team at hatamakaya turns to bentley whose suite of programs has made them an industry leader in infrastructure engineering software bentley software is able to combine data from different sources like lidar scans to create a complete digital model of the project enabling the project team to visualize the job in a variety of ways bentley luminar t was used to create a visualization of the road which was pretty central in identifying problems and then displaying them in very visual ways in this case the planned route clashed with an existing road and the visualization was used to quickly identify the need for a higher bridge clearance for a project that's reliant on state funding advanced tech solutions like this are essential for keeping costs down we are very happy to use all of the resourceful technology and how we can bring the valuable advantage to elevate the digital transformation of the project so we can ensure that this uh tall world will be in the best quality that can be used by all of the people for the next 40 or 16 years when the road is completed it'll have major benefits for sumatra's economy as well as a booming tourist industry the island boasts enormous mineral wealth which once earned it the nickname the island of gold sumatra has huge deposits of oil silver and coal and is a major producer of tea coffee rice and corn with journey times due to be cut in half by the road and logistics costs reduced by 30 percent these export industries will all benefit massively from the projects but who in turn will benefit from that economic development i don't doubt that it will support economic development as it supports connectivity and stuff but there is a worry that it will only be enjoyed by not many existing roads set to be bypassed by the new toll route provide a valuable source of income for many of the island's poorer citizens now suggestions have been made to try and replicate their businesses along the new highway you know local communities have their small medium businesses that have been through more than 10 15 years having stalls in the road where a lot of people would come and stop by either for their lunch their meals or even just to have their cup of coffee when they're you know on a road trip break that there should be some sort of allocation or where existing businesses can open in the tall road where they plan to make a lot of rest areas will there be opportunities for the existing communities to open there if they do will there be subsidies for them as well as well as the human element there's also concern for sumatra's rich ecosystem which hosts many critically endangered species this branch road connecting the main highway to the city of badang cuts across the border of the kurensi sublat national park that's one of the biggest of its kind on the island and one of the most important tiger conservation habitats in the world in terms of tigers in itself it's actually one of the key species of sumatra that still roams very much in the wok by fragmenting their roaming area through the road cutting there would be increase of human wildlife conflict activities where the tigers in itself will roam into community areas in a place as verdant and wild as sumatra economic development will almost always be at odds with the natural environment and there are no easy answers indonesia's economic growth has helped reduce absolute poverty levels from over 70 percent in the 1980s to less than 10 today for that economic growth to continue across sumatra it's going to need reliable modern infrastructure like the trans-sumatra toll road a key part of developing tourism shipping and industry across the island and it's important to know that it doesn't always have to come at a cost to wildlife we also conserve the natural habitat of elephants so we develop also like a crossing for the elephants in another section so we also consider the sustainability of the animals my personal view is that i'd like to be as hopeful as possible i think as long as that there will be opportunities for civil society organizations those communities to also take part later on to have our suggestions be considered and be implemented just over 650 kilometers of the road is currently operational so there's still some way to go if it's going to meet its planned completion date of 2024 once fully open it'll have a profound effect on the island and gives sumatra a key piece of modern infrastructure that it needs if it wants to grow further while the wider implications of this remain to be seen anyone taking part in mudic will definitely have an easier ride [Music] this video was made possible by bentley systems you can learn more about that at the link below and as always if you enjoyed this video and you want to get more from the definitive video channel for construction make sure you subscribe to the b1m

Channel: The B1M

Views: 1,329,584

Keywords: B1M, TheB1M, Construction, architecture, engineering, The B1M, Fred Mills, building, infrastructure, indonesia, sumatra, trans sumatera toll, trans sumatra toll, megaproject, highway, motorway, tiger, road, asia, jungle, rainforest, bentley systems, procore, autodesk, bluebeam, graphisoft, construction tech, LIDAR, digital construction, BIM

Id: MPK8N8PUwrM

Length: 11min 13sec (673 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 29 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/AutoModerator]

Remember to follow the reddiquette, engage in a healthy discussion, refrain from name-calling, and please remember the human. Report any harassment, inflammatory comments, or doxxing attempts that you see to the moderator. Moderators may lock/remove an individual comment or even lock/remove the entire thread if it's deemed appropriate. You're also encouraged to write down a summary, submission statement, or your personal opinion in the comment section as well.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/[deleted]]

Imho Trans Sumatera jarang dibahas ya. Biasanya kalau infrastruktur di Indonesia pada bahas IKN, Kereta Cepat, dan MRT Jakarta. Ini langsung dari YouTuber luar negeri.

[u/TheArstotzkan]

Comment2 di video aslinya banyak banget yang anti mobil ya. I'm all for rail infras, tapi ya realistis juga sih. Kita masih negara berkembang. Logistik kita masih banyak yang pakai truk. Infra kereta bakal lebih berguna kalo masalah jalan udah beres. Belum lagi pembangunan infra kereta jauh lebih mahal dan lama daripada infra jalan (lihat yang sekarang di Sulawesi, hampir 10 tahun buat bikin 140an KM rel)

[u/izfanx]

Oooo B1M. Channel bagus tuh seputar civil eng sama infrastruktur. Love to see this covered.

[u/visope]

Daendels: Ni kenapa gw kagak kepikiran ya dulu!!

[u/Substantial-Lab-9661]

Kita masih car oriented country

[u/KOTYAR]

Nice. Thanks for sharing