AASHTO Journal - Utah DOT Begins Major Pavement Recycling Project

The Utah Department of Transportation recently started what it describes as one of its largest pavement recycling projects ever on a 35-miles stretch of U.S. Route 50 in Millard County.

[Above photo by Utah DOT]

The agency said that recycling process – known as cold-in-place or CIR recycling – grinds up the existing roadway, mixes it with rejuvenating oils and asphalt binder, and places it back on the road as a renewed layer of pavement, which saves time, reduces costs, and extends the life of the road.

All told, Utah DOT said the project will reuse 90 percent of the roadway material already on site and should save approximately $5 million compared with traditional road repair methods.

The agency added that the CIR also reduces the need to haul materials in and out of the highway work zone, helping shorten construction time by about 40 percent and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 90 percent.

[Editor’s note: The video below by the South Carolina Department of Transportation details another form of road material recycling called the “road reclamation” process.]

“This CIR process helps us decrease the amount of maintenance, address our roads that need a little love, and stretch our budget to the best of our ability,” noted Chavis Jensen, Utah DOT Region Four engineer, in a statement. “It also helps to reduce the amount of cracking while improving our future sustainability efforts here in Utah.”

He added that the CIR process also gives the agency another way to maintain rural roads that may not carry the same traffic volumes as major urban routes yet still play an important role in connecting small communities across the state. Because CIR requires one-way alternating traffic during construction, it is not typically used on high-volume highways and interstates, where major lane reductions would create significant delays.

“We’re very specific about where we look to use this process,” Jensen said. “It’s producing equal quality of roadways as any other process that we do here in Utah. So that’s great, when we can use less money to produce just as good of quality of roads.”