Concrete highway earns rave reviews

A line in the province’s five-year highway plan that was released Tuesday shows the 11-kilometre concrete stretch of Highway 101 east of Ellershouse is one of the 180 highway projects scheduled for the 2018-2019 budget year.

But what it doesn’t show is the success that this stretch of road has turned out to be. It’s the first major work on the concrete section since it was laid in 2003, and Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal chief engineer Peter Hackett says the estimated cost is less than $1 million.

Concrete highways have a 30to 40-year life expectancy. The ten- der for the work includes another section near Oxford to be built.

“We’ll do some grinding on it to get the grooves back, and there are some cracks . . . to be filled,” Hackett said. “Around the 15- to 18-year mark we expect to do that kind of rehab work, and that should take you to the 30- to 40year life expectancy.”

He said at $700,000 to $1 million for each section, concrete has turned out to be the durable and low-maintenance surface expected.

That’s less than a fifth of what it would cost to repave asphalt road, Hackett said.

“You’d have to redo the whole thing, which for 10 kilometres would be a fair amount of money, in the millions,” he said.

But that saving hasn’t trans- lated into more concrete roads in Nova Scotia.

When the transportation department puts out a tender for road construction or replacement, it allows for alternate bids of concrete in addition to asphalt.

“The up-front cost is probably going to be more with concrete,” Hackett said. “But then when you look at its lifecycle costs over 30 years: how much money do you put into rehab, and you put inflation in that and so on and so forth, and then you come up with an equivalent value number at the 30-year mark.”

The concrete section on the 101 was a test when the highway was twinned.

There have been no successful concrete bids for road work since that section was laid, and not every bid includes an alternative bid for concrete.

Part of the issue is that no roadbuilding companies in Nova Scotia have the equipment for continuous- pour concrete operations, meaning they would have to subcontract to firms outside the province.

Hackett said there probably aren’t many idle concrete spreaders available.

“If you’re trying to get somebody to come down here and there’s lots of work going on in Ontario and Quebec it’s probably hard to free one up,” he said.

“We don’t do enough concrete roads in Atlantic Canada to really have a contractor that could really hold onto a concrete spreader and crew.”