News Release
HRM Part of Innovative Project that Gives Old Tires New Life
Tuesday, March 11, 2014 (Halifax, NS) – Normally tires are what enable our vehicles to travel safely on the roads, but with one quarter-kilometre stretch in the Halifax Regional Municipality, the embankment of the road is actually made of tires.
HRM and its partners, the Province of Nova Scotia and Stantec, are paving the way in tire recycling in Canada with the Ragged Lake Transit Access Connector Roadway, an innovative project that used locally available tire derived aggregate (TDA) to build an access ramp between Highway 103 and a new municipal transit facility.
“This project was a great opportunity to use a locally sourced recycled material in a different way,” said Anne Sherwood, a design engineer involved with the Ragged Lake project. “Not only is the use of shredded tires an environmentally friendly and innovative approach to road construction, since they are processed locally, the cost was comparable to traditional fill.”
David McCusker, HRM’s Transportation Planning Manager, is excited about the project for another reason.
“This is the first major section of roadway we've built for the exclusive use of transit buses,” Mr. McCusker said. “When we can get buses out into service more quickly, we're providing more productive hours and better service for commuters. It may be only a few minutes saved for each bus, but with the number of buses exiting the Ragged Lake Transit Centre, it adds up to almost $100,000 a year in savings.”
WSP was behind the project design, which used TDA developed by Stantec and supplied by Halifax C&D Recycling, a local company contracted by the Resource Recovery Fund Board (RRFB) to produce materials meeting specifications for civil engineering projects.
The project was completed last fall and is now in operation. In the end, approximately 250 metres of the access ramp was built using 8,000 cubic metres of TDA — that’s equivalent to three quarters of Nova Scotia’s average tire production per year or approximately 800,000 scrap tires.
There have been similar projects in California that used old tires to develop rubberized asphalt concrete, but this is the first project specifically of this kind in Atlantic Canada.
The project has already received provincial recognition. Every year Engineers Nova Scotia presents the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Excellence in Engineering, which highlights original achievement, creative accomplishment in engineering or excellence in engineering design.
This year the association gave honourable mention to Stantec and HRM for their work on the Ragged Lake Transit Access Connector Roadway.
To view photos of the roadway under construction and for more information on the Ragged Lake project, please visit: http://www.stantec.com/content/stantec/en/our-work/projects/canada-projects/r/ragged-lake-transit-access-connector-roadway.html.
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Media Contact:
Jennifer Stairs
HRM Communications
902-476-5975
