Scrap Tires to Pave Way to Port of Long Beach

One of the nation’s busiest truck traffic arteries, Interstate 710 between Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif., will soon include a four-mile stretch paved with rubberized asphalt containing scrap tire shreds.

A write-up in the February 2010 edition of Car & Driver magazine offers a diagram and description of the 10-layer formula that will be used to re-pave a four-mile stretch of the interstate.

The I-710 freeway carries a steady stream of trucks carrying sea containers to the Port of Long Beach. With a healthy percentage of those outbound containers carrying scrap metals, paper and plastics, the corridor will now offer a recycled-content path for the tons of recycled materials being shipped overseas.

According to the Car & Driver write-up, the four-mile stretch that will be topped with rubberized asphalt will also keep the old concrete in place as a foundation material. Several layers of other materials will be placed between those two layers. The multi-year project is not expected to be complete until 2015.

The rubberized asphalt with scrap tire pieces in the aggregate mix was chosen specifically by engineers to reduce noise on the truck-heavy stretch of highway.