Success Of Rubberised Roads

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29239, 24 June 1960, Page 17

Success Of Rubberised Roads

“VVlTH'traffic increasing daily, ’* Europe is faced with the danger that present road carpets will prove inadequate for the job,” warns Constantin Antoniades, one of Europe’s leading road engineer. In an article in The Natural Rubber Development Board’s journal he advocates the widespread adoption of a new low cost high performance rubberised road surface, stretches of which have already been laid in many European cities from Istanbul to Paris. Efficiency “My associates and I have developed highly economical and efficient methods of preparing rubberised binders, the use of which does not involve any difficulty in processing or handling of materials. neither do they involve any increase in labour costs or underproduction during the coating process. It is generally assumed that a rubberised surface must cost

more in materials than when a plain binder is used. This surprisingly is not so.

“During the last seven years many miles of road surfaces, containing rubber, have been laid in many parts of the world, under varying climate conditions, in Britain, France, Belgium, Malta, Switzerland and Turkey,” said Antoniades. “All of these have, as anticipated, given excellent performance and fulfilled the essential requirements of a good surface. They remained waterproof, dimensionally stable under all climate conditions, did not break or crumble under the heaviest traffic, and their original non-slip surface has not deteriorated in this respect. They have proved economically sound. Heavy Traffic

“Some of these surfaces carry a very heavy traffic of more than 10,000 vehicles a day, and after periods of three to 10 years they have shown no visible signs of wear or deformation,” says Antoniades.

The author predicts that with the increase of traffic on all roads the time is near when conventional road carpets will prove inadequate in strength so that more substantial thicknesses will be required.

“The use of rubberised binders will,” he says, “permit an easy construction of more wear resisting and better road surfaces at a reduced cost, as owing to the properties of these binders, already described, only a comparatively slight increase of the thickness of the carpets will be necessary to meet the heavier traffic conditions in the near future.”