As if the cancellation of flights and trains due to strikes and staff shortages weren’t upsetting travelers enough this summer, the European heat wave arrived to exacerbate the travel chaos. Extreme heat can be dangerous to people’s health—even deadly—but it affects the built environment, too. It can cause metals and asphalt surfaces to expand and warp, making roads, rails, and runways difficult or dangerous to use. This disrupted thousands of journeys this summer.
The fact that rails can buckle and asphalt “melt”—or rather, soften and deform—became clear in July as temperatures climbed above 40 degrees Celsius in many European countries, setting many new records. On July 18, a small section
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