Dickinson embraces scrap rubber to improve roads
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The Dickinson County Road Commission reports that nearly all of the county roads paved so far this summer have used rubber-modified asphalt, saving scrap tires from landfills.
"This year, all our locally bid projects have used asphalt modified with scrap-tire rubber," Road Commission Engineer Lance Malburg said. "Possibly some of the rubber in the roads may have come from the very vehicles that have driven on them."
The rubber increases the pavement's resilience and durability, Malburg explained.
"It increases the asphalt's ability to flex under load and recover without cracking. It also increases its ability to absorb other forces which would cause cracking, like cold weather shrinkage forces, which causes transverse cracking," he said.
Ground tire rubber modified asphalt is considered experimental by most road agencies, including the Michigan Department of Transportation, and therefore they do not use it. However, DCRC has embraced it, and is a leader using this new technology.
DCRC has partnered with Michigan Technological University and the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy on various research projects using ground tire modified asphalt since 2018 and has a good grasp on this improved asphalt, officials said.
Prior to this year, DCRC constructed 10.5 miles of county roads using 231,798 pounds of ground tire rubber modified asphalt, saving 30,428 tires from landfills. This year, DCRC has laid an additional 4.5 miles, with more on the horizon.
"Using ground tire modified asphalt not only makes better, longer lasting roads, it also is good for the environment," Malburg said. "In the projects we have paved so far this year, we have used 135,486 pounds of rubber. That is the equivalent of 16,935 tires."
Add that to the rubber used in previous years, and DCRC has used 47,363 tires to improve roads. "That is over 47,000 tires that did not go to the dump, but were recycled, and turned into longer lasting asphalt roads," Malburg said.
"Residents like that it also makes a quieter road," said Jim Harris, managing director of the Road Commission.
"We are fortunate to have a local contractor like Bacco Construction willing to try innovative technologies like rubber modified asphalt," Harris added. "Also, Professor (Zhanping) You and his team at MTU have been a great resource in rubberized asphalt. Without them on board, we would not have been able to do any of this innovative paving."