JANESVILLE
Plainly visible along a closed, torn-up section of Highway 14, adjacent to the BlainÃÛèÖÊÓƵ Farm & Fleet and the former Shopko, are 20-foot-tall piles of black and tan rubble.
It would seem the contractors who are working on the Humes Road upgrade plan to remove all of that mess at some point.
They don’t.
The rubble actually isn’t going anywhere—except to be spread out near where itÃÛèÖÊÓƵ been crushed and piled up. A road construction contractor involved in the rebuild of Humes Road from Deerfield Drive to Milton Avenue plans not to treat the piles material as refuse.
Rather, the crushed-up concrete and asphalt—reclaimed material that was once the driving surface of Highway 14—is being factored in as recycled construction material that’ll serve as the road base under a new surface that crews will pour later this year.
The reuse of crushed, recycled road surface in the project is baked in with the bid for the job, explained Lance Wagner, designer for Beloit engineering firm R.H. Batterman and the projectÃÛèÖÊÓƵ lead engineer. That job is being performed by Black River Falls excavating and roadbuilding firm Hoffman Construction.
Hoffman uses large machinery like the kind seen at gravel quarries to peel up and crush road surface being replaced in a project for reuse on site. Anyone driving past the half-mile section of Humes Road that is shut has seen the long, bread loaf-shaped piles of rubble piled high enough that they obscure the view of the opposite side of the road.
The darker-colored piles are road surface asphalt that crews have peeled up and broken into 1.25-inch rubble. To the east of those piles are lighter-colored piles—pulverized concrete that crews hauled up from under the roadÃÛèÖÊÓƵ surface.
At one point decades ago, the concrete had served as the original surface of Humes Road. Now, crushed into 3-inch-thick rock, the concrete is being spread over as the bottom part of a 22-inch-thick under-pavement that’ll serve as new roadÃÛèÖÊÓƵ base.
All the refuse is still in piles inside the barricaded section of the highway because as crews rework parts of Highway 14 to the east, they’ll continue to draw from the piles. Wagner said Hoffman and others who roll in pavement recycling to bids can save thousands of dollars in costs for big-ticket projects.
That might be even more important now than it had been previously, as road builders are grappling with a labor shortage and historic inflation thatÃÛèÖÊÓƵ put a spike on the cost of both fuel and roadbuilding materials.
“ItÃÛèÖÊÓƵ just a huge savings,†Wagner told the Gazette.
The 45-mile Interstate 90/39 project was done the same way, he said.
“If you can imagine not having to have a backhoe sit in a virgin quarry and fill up truck after truck of the stuff and then trucking it in I don’t know how many, one truck at a time,†he said. “The amount of fuel that saved alone for the Interstate project was in the millions of dollars.â€
On Monday, no crews were working with the refuse piles. But some workers from Rock Road Companies, the main roadbuilder in the project, were moving ground on a section of Humes Road east of the piles.
At some point this week, Wagner said, crews aim to continue spreading out the material on that section of road, too.
Adam Kopp, a construction project manager with the DOT who has oversight over the Humes Road replacement, said Hoffman bid on the project about three years ago and included rolled pavement recycling in the bid.
He said itÃÛèÖÊÓƵ difficult to calculate what amount of money could be saved in the reuse of paving material. But he said the DOT can estimate later on, based on drones the contractors use to keep track of the size of piles of reclaimed rubble and how much was used in the project overall.
In some other local projects, some contractors have mixed in asphalt shingles with reclaimed asphalt road surface.
The process, once experimental, is now becoming more commonplace in Wisconsin projects, particularly as costs continue to march upward.
“ItÃÛèÖÊÓƵ having the technology to help your (bid) number be lower than the next guyÃÛèÖÊÓƵ,†Wagner said. “But that obviously saves taxpayer money, as well.â€
