Workers recycle old road surfaces on site to create a road base for a new project
The Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) is recycling old concrete on site at Bangerter Highway to support the construction of new interchanges.
Workers on the Bangerter 4700 South project just recycled about 15,000 cubic yards of concrete – enough to fill two Goodyear blimps. UDOT chose to recycle the material on-site rather than haul it off-site to reduce the number of truck trips in the area.
“In the past, this concrete would have been wasted, but now it is being recycled and reused for UDOT projects,” said Robert Stewart, director of UDOT Region 2. “This pavement has been here for 30 years and it’s great to be able to breathe new life into it.”
Over the past five months, work has been carried out on the recycling process every day.
To accomplish this task, workers used heavy machinery to break up the old sections of the highway. Then the material was fed into an on-site crusher. The crusher has a large magnet inside to separate the concrete from the metal rebar, which will also be recycled.
After all the large chunks of cement were broken down into tiny pieces, UDOT began processing them into a road base for the new interchange.
“We’re taking the old Bangerter Highway, breaking it down and processing it into a product that we’re going to incorporate into the new Bangerter Highway,” said Jake Nielson, project manager for the Bangerter 4700 South project. “What most people don’t realize is that most of the materials on our highways are 100% recyclable, whether it’s concrete or asphalt.”
For more than a decade, UDOT has been working to eliminate traffic lights on Bangerter Highway by converting intersections into crossing points. This year, UDOT is building crossing points at 13400 South, 9800 South, 4700 South and 2700 West.
The Bangerter Highway is one of the largest north-south corridors in the Salt Lake Valley, with an average of 60,000 vehicles traveling on it each day. By removing traffic lights and converting all intersections into freeway-like interchanges, safety will be increased and traffic will keep flowing on the ever-growing west side of the Salt Lake Valley.
