An innovative and environmentally-friendly way to resurface roads will shortly be used near Ripon, providing drivers with a new, smooth road surface.
Highways England will be using pioneering technology to reconstruct a 10-mile stretch of the A1(M) northbound carriageway between Ripon and Leeming. In total, around 100,000 tonnes of tarmac will be laidquicker with a 60% less waste going to landfill.
Usually, to resurface a road, the old road is planed off and taken away as waste. The new material is normally delivered in 18 tonne truckloads with an average of 350 tonnes being brought in per shift, that’s around 50 wagons coming and going everyday.
The new machine – called a cold repaver – grinds up the existing road to be recycled, combining it with fresh bitumen and cement before laying it back down immediately on the road behind.
A video showing the machine in action has also been released and is available at
Highways England project manager Andrew Brown said:
“There are lots of benefits to using this new way of working. It means we can reconstruct larger areas of road much quicker, there are fewer construction vehicle trips and the new road lasts much longer – up to 20 years before another major reconstruction is required.
“This was the first machine of its type in the UK, but it has already been used successfully in the USA, France and China. This new technology was used for the first time in the North East in 2016 when we resurfaced just over a mile stretch of the A1 at Brownieside. The lessons we learnt from that allowed us to refine our processes to provide even smoother journeys for motorists.”
Preparation work started on Monday 4 June and will last for around a month with various carriageway closures overnight between 8pm and 6am. This is to install a contraflow, where both north and southbound traffic will travel on the southbound carriageway.
Resurfacing work will then get underway in July with the overall scheme is due to be completed by early autumn.
Clearly signed diversions will be in place during the full overnight closures.