JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The News4JAX I-TEAM has seen the multiple damage reports from people driving I-10 between Chaffee Road and Hammond Boulevard. The damage is due to construction and broken asphalt.
On Thursday, an asphalt company, not affiliated with the I-10 construction, took us to a lab to show us what materials are being used to make roads.
“We are not just taking a bunch of rock and liquid, putting it together and sending it out. There’s a real science behind what we are doing,” Steve McReynolds, Director of Operations at Asphalt Testing Solutions (ATS) said.
While they aren’t testing the asphalt on I-10, they are F-DOT certified. ATS tests sample mixes from Duval Asphalt, going to different projects in surrounding counties.
I-TEAM: More I-10 drivers speak out about denied claims for construction project damage
“It’s a major expense for road building. So, the object is to get a longer life of asphalt,” McReynolds said. He says the standard design for asphalt is to last 20 years.
That’s regardless of traffic levels, broken up into three categories:
A--neighborhoods with lower traffic counts and slower speeds
C--roads like Baymeadows or US-1
E--heavier travel roadways like I-95 or I-10
“20 years is a long time, technology changes, traffic increases also. That’s a big key. A road might deteriorate faster, simply because they couldn’t calculate for the traffic increase,” McReynolds said.
Their daily testing includes the flexibility of asphalt. They use a machine to see if it can stand up to the traffic, then in theory, it can last longer.
“It’s rotating, it’s gyrating and it’s applying pressure 600 kilopascals,” McReynolds said.
McReynolds wants drivers to know that Florida has some of the best roads in the country. And the goal of ATS is to make a better product for our roads in the future.