Near Toulouse, motorists can now drive on a rather special road: here’s why
By David Saint-Sernin
Published on
It is a brand new bitumen that motorists have been able to appreciate for a few days while driving on departmental road 17 located in the town of Merville (Haute-Garonne), to northwest of Toulouse.
A project which at first glance is similar to many other projects aimed at keeping the 6,138 km of departmental roads in Haute-Garonne in good condition.
1.7 unprecedented kilometer
Yet the 1.7 kilometers of repairwhich were carried out under the aegis of the county council, constituting a special section of road according to the explanations given by the community.
“At Merville, it’s a wearing course made up of a plant-based coating, Biophalt®, which was laid over 1.7 km of the RD 17, replacing the bitumen coating used until then. It is an innovative and ecological solution deployed for the first time in Haute-Garonne”, supports the Department.
A vegetable coating
Biophalt® combines three innovations, as the Eiffage company points out: “The use of a biosourced binder, derived from forestry and co-products from the paper industry, which fully replaces oil-based bitumen used ; the recycling of more than 40% of asphalt aggregates from the pavement in place (55% in Merville), which allows the preservation of natural resources in new materials from quarries; and finally, lowering the manufacturing temperature, which limits energy consumption and reduces CO2 emissions”.
Tested in France since 2020
Before Merville, other places in France tested the same type of coating. This product was implemented for the first time in September 2020 on the access road to the Mont-Blanc tunnel. The innovation had also been applied to the repair of 2.1 kilometers of roadway on the A40 motorway near Vonnas (Ain) and on the RN 205 at the level of the Chavants tunnel (Haute-Savoie).
In the Gers too
Closer to the Haute-Garonne, it is the Gers which started using this new generation of asphalt by renovating a section of roadway on the RD654, depending on L’Isle-Jourdain in Condom.
For this 1.7 km project, “47 tons of CO2 were saved compared to a traditional solution, as well as 270 tons of extraction of new materials”, assures the Departmental Council which indicates “that a follow-up on 2 years will be carried out by the technical services of the Departmental Council and the company Eiffage, in order to measure the mechanical performance of the coating in situ and to evaluate its behavior”.
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