Road budget stretched with recycled asphalt

P.E.I. Transportation Minister Ron MacKinley says paving roads using recycled materials is helping to spare a budget pummelled by high asphalt prices.

"The challenge we have this year is liquid asphalt went from $590 a tonne to $850 a tonne," MacKinley told CBC News on Friday.

So instead of buying new asphalt, MacKinley says, the department is using millings, the ground-up asphalt skimmed off a road that is being resurfaced. It is not unusual to put millings back down on roads, but they are normally used to top clay roads.

But this year's cost increase for asphalt meant the budget wouldn't cover all the roads due for repaving.

"These roads are in bad shape, so what we decided to do is put these millings on, recycled asphalt I call it, and it might give us 10 years," says MacKinley.

Bill MacEwen lives on a section of Westville Road in New Dominion, west of Charlottetown. After 50 years without fresh pavement, his road was supposed to get new pavement this year. That didn't happen, but MacEwen says the recycled asphalt will do for now.

"It's not the real thing, but we'll know next spring how it stands up," he says.

"As I say, it's an awful lot better than it was and it'll make a good base for anything I would think."

It costs about $12,000 to resurface a kilometre of road using millings, says MacKinley, compared to $75,000 to put down new asphalt.