A municipality in southern Manitoba has found a new solution for improving rural road building.
The Rural Municipality of Stanley is located in the Pembina Valley, making up land surrounding Winkler and Morden. Public Works Supervisor Ken Thiessen says they have been implementing a relatively new process on one of their roads.
Thiessen explains they are using a product called Geocell along Road 27 West. How this works is that crews take a flexible, three-dimensional, honeycomb-like structure made from polymer, which is like a common packing plastic or thermoplastic polymer resin. They then lay out this product overtop of a subgrade to stabilize it. After that, they fill them with either gravel or sand to balance loads evenly.
According to Thiessen, they were approached by Geocell about seven or eight years ago.
"We ran across it at a trade show, and so we've been trying it for various things over the years, mostly in road bases that have moisture issues," explains Thiessen. "The oldest paved road now I believe is four years and it's still solid. There's less cracking in it than most structures that age."
Thiessen says this product certainly has some appealing cost benefits.
"The cost of Geocell is roughly the same as the cost of three inches of pavement or hard top, and normally on industrial roads we often put six inches of pavement," he explains.
Thiessen says they are now putting only three inches of pavement and are also using less expensive materials for the infill. He notes normally this would be a 24 to 30-inch structure but is now a 15-inch structure with nine inches of very inexpensive screen sand as infill.
Time will tell what long-term maintenance will look like on these new roads. However, Thiessen says if there continues to be less cracking, then there is less crack sealing to do and less wear and tear on the surface.
He notes other jurisdictions across the world have tried this and have seen that net benefit.