25 Years of CARD/1 in the field

A total of 1000km of the Kerala State Highways were revised using CARD/1 so that the road network could fulfil growing demands. Kerala (Malayalam) is an Indian state and lies on the Malabar coast in south-west India. It is one of the most densely populated regions of the country.

As a result of the high population density, the road network of Kerala is considerably closer meshed as in other Indian states. There are eight National Highways covering a total length of 1524km. Kerala has over 140,000 kilometers of roadway.

The revised highway mostly runs over hilly terrain. And while the many local thoroughfares make for picturesque scenery, they present the planners with an extremely tough challenge. CARD/1's one-stop system for handling project work makes it economical and enabled the planners to meet the tight deadline.
The project began with an evaluation of the initial survey, producing base maps of the existing conditions and providing digital terrain models. On the basis of newly calculated alignments derived from the existing conditions, longitudinal profiles were interpolated, new vertical alignments developed and finally the cross-sections fitted in.

The standard cross-section consists of a 7m-wide carriageway adjoining a 1.5m hard shoulder on either side and a 1m soft shoulder. The road was resurfaced with an asphaltic base course sealed with an asphaltic wearing course.
The base maps for this hardly inconsequential project were produced on a 1:5000 scale, the longitudinal profiles on a 1:5000/500 scale and the cross-sections on a 1:200 scale.