Pavement Recycling and Rehabilitation Gives Roads New Life

Pavement on seven sections of Essex County roads is being recycled, topped with new asphalt and, in some spots, enhanced with smooth asphalt shoulders for users like cyclists and pedestrians.

The work this summer is refurbishing 31.4 kilometres of road in four municipalities using a process called “cold in-place recycling with expanded asphalt mix.”

When appropriate, it is more environmentally friendly than replacing the road surface because it reuses the existing pavement, said Peter Bziuk, Essex County’s manager of design and construction services.

The pavement is ground up by machines at the front of a “recycling train” of road building equipment. The dry, crumbled pavement is then mixed with fresh asphalt cement to hold it together. At the end of the train, the mixture is spread back on the road and smoothed.

Samples are taken and tested to make sure it is up to standard as the work proceeds, explained Jay Herbert, an inspector with the Infrastructure Services Department.

“Then we return and put 50 millimetres of new asphalt on top to improve rideability and add to the structure,” he said. “After the pavement is completed, we do driveways and intersections. Then the final stage is a road shouldering operation which adds additional stone to the edge, so you don’t have that drop-off.”

The County assesses roads annually and has a five-year rehabilitation program. This year, the contract for the work involving cold in-place recycling with expanded asphalt mix was awarded to Coco Paving Inc., the lowest bidder. By mid-July, half the projects had been completed, said Herbert, who oversees them.

The seven projects are in Amherstburg, Essex, Kingsville and Lakeshore on the following roads:

1. County Road 18 from County Road 23 to McCormick Road – 5.3 km, including the addition of paved shoulders.
2. County Road 20 from County Road 50 to Front Road South – 6.5 km, including the addition of paved shoulders.
3. County Road 20 from Harrow to County Road 41 – 6.2 km.
4. County Road 23 from County Road 27 to County Road 18 East – 3.6 km, including the addition of 0.5 km of paved shoulders.
5. County Road 34 from Upcott Road to County Road 29 – 4 km, including the addition of paved shoulders.
6. County Road 46 from County Road 31 to Myers Road – 3.7 km.
7. County Road 50 from County Road 20 to Collison Side Road – 2.1 km, including the addition of paved shoulders.

The projects are part of Essex County’s ongoing road rehabilitation program, which includes work at other locations that involves putting new asphalt on top of existing pavement or removing and replacing deteriorating pavement.

During the road construction season, weekly Construction and Road Closure updates are posted on the County of Essex website. Road users can also check an interactive map of road projects in the region.

The Infrastructure Services Department is responsible for most of the arterial roads in the seven municipalities that make up Essex County. If all the lanes on those roads were laid out end-to-end they would stretch over 1,500 km – roughly the distance from Essex County to New Brunswick.