Plastic roads: How a UTA professor is paving the way for better streets
ARLINGTON (CBSNewsTexas.com) — A University of Texas at Arlington professor is taking "reuse, reduce and recycle" to whole other level.
There's a machine in the professor's lab that is paving the way for longer lasting roads in North Texas - roads with fewer cracks and potholes.
"With the mix, this is what happens to the road after extended period of time, under the traffic volume," explains Dr. Sahadat Hossain. He is a Civil Engineering Professor at UTA and is the school's director of Solid Waste Institute for Sustainability.
Dr. Hossain, along with his team of students and research assistants, have been researching for over 3 years on how to make our roads stronger.
They conducted thousands of tests and experiments.
"So we tried to balance the rutting and the cracking susceptibility of the mix, which are the two main concerns," says Shruti Singh who is Dr. Hossain's Research Assistant.
They figured out mixing recycled and nonrecycled plastic into hot asphalt, or "in-between mix," would strengthen it, thus creating "plastic roads".
The Dallas TxDOT District awarded UTA and Dr. Hossain's project nearly $1 million in grant money.
TxDOT officials believe plastic roads can save them major bucks when it comes to road maintenance while benefiting drivers at the same time.
"The proposed technology and the benefits discussed have a potential of cost savings to the department," according to Ricardo Gonzalez, the director of TxDOT Fort Worth.
Dr. Hossain says, "If we can make a mix that can push the maintenance from two years to five years or two years to 10 years, it reduces a lot of maintenance costs. It reduces a lot of headaches for the drivers,"
Dr. Hossain tells CBS News Texas his team is currently working on installing a plastic road in Kaufman County. They are looking to pave the plastic road on a low volume road like a residential street and have it completed by this summer.
