ForConstructionPros.com

When the road construction season draws to a close, innovative contractors find a way to complete just one more project. Such was the case this past Fall on a county road in South Central Illinois.

The 2.5-mile stretch of Christian County Highway 1 was in serious need of reconstruction. The job called for it to be completely rebuilt about 10 miles south of Taylorville, IL, just north of the Montgomery County line.

Cold milling machines brought in by Dunn Co., Decatur, IL, took on the role of a road widener, taking millings from the center of a thick hot-mix asphalt (HMA) pavement and placing them in a 10-in.-deep widening trench on either side of the existing pavement. Then, twin Wirtgen WR 2500 S reclaimer/stabilizers, operating in tandem, pulverized and full-depth recycled the road and new shoulders using a proprietary asphalt emulsion, prior to its resurfacing with HMA.

Studying CIP for Illinois agencies
The innovative operation drew government road agency observers from all over Central Illinois. Among the visitors was Marshall Thompson, P.E., professor emeritus, civil engineering, for the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a member of the National Asphalt Pavement Association's Hot Mix Hall of Fame. He is also associated with the Illinois Center for Transportation (ICT).

Last July, Thompson and Professor Sam Carpenter began research at ICT on cold in-place recycling (CIP) with asphalt products. His visit to Highway 1 was part of that research.