Plastic Roads Sound Like a Crazy Idea, Maybe Aren't

schwit1 writes with news that the Dutch city of Rotterdam is looking at partnering with a company called VolkerWessels to test a prototype plastic road for safety and durability. "They envision pulling waste plastic out of the oceans, and then processing it into prefabricated sections of road with integrated utility channels and drainage. The composition and structure of the plastic makes it more durable than traditional asphalt, and VolkerWessels estimates that their plastic roads should last about three times as long as traditional roads." The roads are manufactured at a factory, and then hauled in a mostly finished state to where they'll end up. This could dramatically reduce the time during which drivers are inconvenienced by road construction efforts.

Comments

Crazy?

[inglorion_on_the_net]

I've read the assertion that plastic roads sound like a crazy idea elsewhere, too. I don't think this ideas is crazy at all. Why would it be? We currently pave roads with asphalt which we get from crude oil. It makes sense to me that if we process the crude (or some other oil or source of hydrocarbons; say, recycled plastic) we can make something that works similarly well or even better.

Re:Crazy?

[sjames]

That's a pretty good description of asphalt, composed of tar and aggregate.

Re:Crazy?

[inglorion_on_the_net]

Sure, but after over 100 years of designing plastics with a wide variety of properties and applications, I don't see why we couldn't make plastics that can be (part of) road surfaces, too. If I understand correctly, the performance in wet conditions still has to be tested, but the temperature tolerance is already wider than that of asphalt. Combating the slippery when wet problem has been done before, too (e.g. the anti-slip coating on bath tubs or fiberglass yachts), although I am not aware of any efforts specifically to support cars and tires.

Re:Crazy?

[Applehu Akbar]

But even if it doesn't work out for pavement, we could always use the plastic to make small modular bricks with snap-together lugs that we could quickly assemble into gas stations, convenience stores and rest areas. Why, if you think about it we could make whole theme parks from this stuff.

Until the tanker catches fire...

[barfy]

Anyone see what just happened in California? Can't imagine the practical road damage and amazing environmental damage of tons of plastic on fire.

Sounds crazy because it is

[kheldan]

Unless you're the company selling the idea in the first place. What it sounds like to me is expensive and pointless. Isn't asphalt reusable? Scoop it up, reheat it, pave with it again? By all means have someone start cleaning up the oceans and recycling all the plastic waste out there, but not this way.

Not going to pull plastic out of the ocean

[jphamlore]

The idea of pulling plastic out of the oceans is senseless to anyone who gives the idea a minute of thought. Do these people have any idea how big the ocean is and how small the particles of plastic can be?

Re:When one fails to learn from history ...

[Applehu Akbar]

Here in Arizona we are laying a lot of rubber roads: more durable, quieter, and no more mountains of old tires. It's like driving on carpet. But in accidents, they can catch fire.

Paving with bricks

[QuietLagoon]

One time when I visited Rotterdam (wonderful people and a great city, btw) I saw some street construction near the hotel I stayed in. The street was paved with bricks. Instead of using a jackhammer to get through the street's surface, the workers just dug up the bricks, did their work, smoothed out the surface and re-installed the bricks. When they were done, it looked like they were never there. So it seems more like a matter of replacing those bricks with plastic ones, as bricks are already being used for road surfaces.

Re:Paving with bricks

[hackertourist]

In .nl, bricks are only used in older side streets that see little traffic (i.e. they're there because they've been there for a long time and it hasn't been necessary to resurface the road). New construction favors tarmac. Tarmac is cheaper to put down as it's all done with giant machines, while bricklaying takes a lot of manual labor. Tarmac is also safer because you have more grip, and it's a lot more comfortable to drive on.

This plastic road would be easier to put down than bricks because it comes in large sections you can crane into place.

Re:Potholes?

[pz]

I live in New England. We have lots of freeze-thaw cycles during the year. It's rare that you see a proper frost heave in a road (and you certainly know it when you see it). By FAR the most road damage is caused by inexpert patching of the asphalt where the surface needs to be cut for utility work. When inexpertly patched, the surface is no longer remotely planar, and the unevenness right at the (and caused by the) patch increases the wear exactly where it can do the most damage. So, shortly, the patch needs a patch. Which is inexpertly done, and the cycle continues until you get a stretch of crud for surface and the local municipality shells out big bucks to have the road re-surfaced entirely.

Compare this to Southern California (where I lived for a number of years) where the road patches after utility work are 100% as smooth as the original surface. With your eyes closed, you cannot tell that you've driven over a patch. The patch (and especially the transitions from original surface to patch, and back) receives no more or less force than the original road, so there's no focus of wear, and it lasts a very long time.

It baffles me why we can't make proper road patches in New England. It's clearly possible. And I really can't believe that the people working to patch roads in Southern California are that much more talented, so it's either a technology issue, lack of managerial directive, or an out-and-out conspiracy to have a never-ending amount of road resurfacing work.