November 1, 2006
By CATHY WOODRUFF, Staff writer
Albany Times Union

Paving crews roll out new asphalt made with recycled tires on county route 201 in Guilderland Tuesday. (John Carl D'Annibale / Times Union)

GUILDERLAND -- Albany County: Where the rubber is the road.

As a marketing slogan, it needs work. But as of this week, it has the advantage of truth in advertising.

Crews with Gorman Brothers of Albany are laying a thin layer of asphalt that includes recycled tire rubber as one of the ingredients on a mile-long stretch of County Route 201.

The work is being done under a $54,000 contract with Albany County, and county officials say they'll be watching the rubberized road carefully in the coming months to gauge how well it holds up.

"Seeing how this goes through a Northeast winter, that's key," said Albany County Public Works Commissioner Mike Franchini. "It's not a fair test of the pavement if it doesn't go through the winter."

The fresh layer rolled out Tuesday features a type of liquid asphalt that combines crumb rubber from recycled tires with the usual petroleum base, contractor Tony Gorman said. This batch of liquid, which was combined here with "aggregate" components such as crushed granite or limestone, was supplied by the Seneca Petroleum Co. in Illinois.

Eventually, Gorman and county officials said, they hope the recycled rubber for the mix will come from local tires processed at a new CRM (Crumb Rubber Manufacturers) plant on Albany Street in Colonie.

The project appears to be the first in the region to use recycled tire rubber for a driving surface. The state Department of Transportation is using a mixture of soil and tire shreds this year for slope and drainage work in Saratoga County, where a Northway bridge over the D&H Railroad is being replaced near Exit 15.

A spokeswoman for state DOT said contractors on some projects around New York have used rubber as an additive in their asphalt mix but have not yet incorporated the use of recycled tires to this extent.

If the new pavement on County Route 201 proves to be as durable as hoped, said Albany County Executive Michael Breslin, it should save money while also helping to tackle a pesky environmental problem: how to dispose of old tires.

If the material proves practical for wider use in state and local road projects, Breslin predicted, "the 20 million tires a year that are generated in New York state will be consumed."

For Albany County, the rubberized asphalt looks most immediately promising as a preventive maintenance tool, though it eventually could prove practical for thicker applications in regular repaving jobs, Franchini said.

On this Stone Road segment of County Route 201, the Gorman Brothers crews were applying an inch-thick layer on Tuesday. The county has sealed some cracks, but the road hadn't deteriorated to the point that it was on the county's paving schedule, Franchini said.

The hope is that this coating will extend the life of the road. Traditional asphalt without the rubber wouldn't do much to stem further cracking in such a thin layer, he said.

Gorman and Hugh Chapman of Seneca Petroleum Co. said rubberized asphalt can cost more per ton, but it can save money with increased durability and the ability to apply it in thinner layers.

It's also a quieter surface, reducing the noise created by friction with tires, and it stays blacker longer before fading to gray, which helps fight icing because the surface absorbs more sunshine warmth, Chapman said.

It's also more elastic, and it better resists cracking and rutting in extremely hot and extremely cold weather, said Chapman. His company supplies rubberized asphalt for use in climates as hot as Arizona and as cold as Michigan, he said.

Gorman estimated that the mix on County Route 201 contains the remnants of 500 to 600 recycled tires, or about one tire per ton of hot mix hitting the road.

The county could stretch its $1.5 million annual paving budget substantially if the rubberized asphalt works out for use in larger paving projects, Franchini said.

"We could save 30 percent of that by cutting down on materials. We could do more roads," he said.