Super sized milling and paving equipment speeding up resurfacing on the M62 in Yorkshire
A new type of resurfacing machine the first of its kind on England’s motorways – has been used to considerably reduce the duration of a resurfacing scheme in West Yorkshire.
A unique 3.8 metre drum fitted to a Wirtgen W 250i enables the machine to remove around 600 tonnes of asphalt per hour – the equivalent of 30 trucks, which means the road is ready to be resurfaced much earlier than using the standard method, creating a longer working window.
There is also an added safety benefit for staff as 50% of the reversing is eliminated.
Highways England’s Project Manager Andy Barlow said: “We know that drivers care about the quality of road surface. We are always keen to trial new innovative technology and ways of working, particularly where it can help improve productivity, enable roadworks to be completed quicker and minimise the disruption for drivers. Utilising Tarmac’s wide paving machine on the M62 scheme was the ideal opportunity.
“This machine not only has the benefit of being capable of laying up to 1,500 tonnes of surfacing material in a single shift – around 15,625 square metres of surface – but is also able to resurface 2 full lanes in one go.
“This eliminates the joint between the running lanes, which would be present if we had done the more traditional method of resurfacing a single lane. As these areas are often the locations where problems with the carriageway surface occurs, this method it should hopefully increase the life of the surface.”
This unique machine has the capability of planing one full-lane width up to 3.8m wide in a single pass unlike the standard method of doing multiple passes.
The planer along with the Volvo 8820 paver have been used to resurface 33 lane miles of the M62 between Rothwell and Normanton (junctions 30-31), the biggest Yorkshire resurfacing scheme last financial year.
The wide paver can lay 2 full width lanes of road surfacing at a time, eliminating one of the joints between the lanes, which is often where potholes can develop. This ensures the road surface is more robust to the cold winter climate, particularly those conditions just recently experienced.
Overall the M62 scheme involved replacing 6,143 metres of steel central reservation barrier with concrete, along with 24 new lighting columns, 38,962 metres of new road markings and 3,768 metres of renewed and improved drainage systems.
Linda Carr, A-one+ Senior Project Manager, said: “We are always looking at ways we can increase productivity to achieve our efficiency targets and the success of this whole scheme was through real partnership working, from end to end with Highways England and our supply chain, specifically Tarmac and NRP for traffic management and planing and CR Civils for drainage and civils.
“Using these 2 new pieces of equipment we were able to reduce the amount of closures which benefitted customers and local communities. We were also able to incorporate additional works into the scheme averting future closures.”
There are plans to use the larger planer and paver in the future on the motorway network.
