RINONADO BVUAITLDIIONNG Looking to the future of road construction
By Martin Charlton Communications
Thomas Hafner felt every bump in the road – literally.
He remembers driving into Moose Jaw from his parents’
home just south of The Friendly City in his father’s
truck. It was a rough ride, he said, and one he wouldn’t dare try after
it rained.
“Back then, the road we used was dirt … and it became really
muddy to the point where you would probably get stuck,” said
Hafner, 93, a retired farmer. “And, of course, the road was narrow
and definitely not a smooth ride. It was nothing at all like the roads
we have today.”
In the days Hafner is referring to, there were fewer roads and
highways. Those that did exist weren’t much beyond cleared earth
wide enough for a path for horse and buggy. Saskatchewan’s primary
dirt roads and highways eventually were upgraded to gravel in
1928. Asphalt and concrete later became the norm for road builders
and are considered to be the most common methods today.
Innovation in the road building industry has seen a plastic road
recently introduced in Europe, with more planned in the near future.
Even the tried and true asphalt you see on the majority of highways
in Saskatchewan comes in various forms and mixes.
Indeed, road building practices have come a long way since
Hafner’s adventures on the provincial highway network. But according
to some in the industry, it has plenty of room to grow.
“Everybody is kind of gun shy when it comes to innovation,”
said Allan Barilla, past chairman with the Saskatchewan Heavy
Construction Association and general manager with Morsky
Construction. “It’s hard to get people to change. You put down
sand or rock for a base and then you pave it and that was how you
made roads. When you start to introduce new technologies…it’s
a hard sell because there are so many old-school people that say
they’ve been building roads this way for 50 years and there’s no
need to change.”
As is the case with cutting-edge technology or anything deemed
state of the art, a hefty price tag is attached. The same can be said
FEATURE
with eco-friendly machines and mixes. Investing in innovation can
be costly.
For the time being, Barilla points to microsurfacing as a popular
practice for road builders, though microsurfacing has been used
over the past 15 or so years. It’s a polymer modified cold mix paving
system used to remedy several problems on streets and highways
and runways. Its materials consist of dense-graded fine aggregate,
asphalt emulsion, water and mineral fillers.
“It’s something that has improved over the years,” Barilla said.
“When it first was introduced, it was a cheap fix. But over the past
three or four years we have been able to do more things with it. It has
more capabilities now than it had in the past.”
Microsurfacing has two basic purposes, with its most major application
filling wheel ruts on highways and preventing water pooling.
Another method sees a machine cover the full width of a driving
lane (12 feet) and lay a thinner application that takes on a look of
new asphalt. The application ranges from one-half-inch thickness
to an inch in thickness. It is likened to a giant squeegee that runs
across the surface of the road and fills in where it’s needed. It’ll add
an extra thickness that takes up to 10 years to wear down.
While innovation may provide more efficient solutions to several
areas of road building, one key mystery is yet to be solved – an asphalt
mixture that could withstand Canada’s inevitable freeze-thaw
cycle. That’s not to say attempts haven’t been made.
“No one has found one yet. Everyone in North America has been
trying different ways to make asphalt last longer and prevent it from
cracking,” Barilla said. “People have used fibre in mixes because fibre
might hold the materials together a bit better. Everything has
been thrown at it – softer oils, harder oils – nobody has come up
with the right answer.”
One analogy that may help explain the challenges of creating a
mixture to stand up to Canada’s harsh climate: Asphalt and microsurfacing
act like a sheet of glass. If you place that sheet of glass on
top of a table, you can sit or stand on the glass without it breaking
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