Texas Highway Repaving Will Use Rubberized Pavement

About 168 miles of Northeast Texas highways will receive new surfaces during the summer of 2011 with a contract awarded in October by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT).

The Texas Transportation Commission has approved a bid of $5 million from NE-TEX Construction out of New Boston, TX to seal coat highways in nine counties located within the Atlanta District.

In Titus County, the resurfacing will include Highway 11 from the Morris to Camp County lines, a distance of four miles; FM 71 from Hwy. 271 to FM 1402, a distance of 9.3 miles; FM 2152 for 8.4 miles; and FM 3417 from Hwy. 271 to FM 127, a distance of 4.2 miles.

“Seal coating a highway involves placing a layer of hot asphalt over the old pavement and then covering it with crushed stone,” Robert H. Ratcliff, District Engineer in Atlanta said. “This process makes the roadway surface watertight and improves skid resistance.”

In an effort to help recycle scrap tires and reduce the potential for tire piles on Texas landscapes, the district is requiring a crumb rubber mix be used in half the asphalt let for the repaving projects.

“Using crumb rubber in our asphalt has proved to be an excellent process for seal coating our highways. The rock is less likely to pull loose, there are fewer occurrences of the asphalt bleeding through the rock, it can be used at lower temperatures and on a wider variety of surfaces,” Ratcliff said.

© Scrap Tire News, December 2010