World First as New Rubber Road and Rail Highway Trial is Announced

Trials of the world’s first all rubber road and rail highway, funded by WRAP (the Waste & Resources Action Programme), are now underway in association with Holdfast Level Crossings Ltd. The HoldFast Rubber Highway (HRH) has the potential to recycle an average of 354,000 tyres in every one mile stretch of rubber highway. WRAP is funding the trial following an open call for demonstration trials using UK post consumer tyres in a range of new applications. The trial will incorporate 8,000 vehicle movements over an eight week period to assess early life performance of the HRH.

New EU legislation banning both whole and shredded tyres from disposal in landfill from July 2006 has led to a greater urgency for the UK to explore new ways to recycle tyres. WRAP’s tyres programme began in April 2005 to break down the barriers to the collection, segregation and reprocessing of waste tyres, to develop alternative end uses for the recovered material, and to develop their markets.

For the purposes of the trial, a 300 metre section of rubber highway is being installed at the site of a car distribution centre in Corby, Northamptonshire.

Existing railway sidings will be used to construct the trial HRH utilising 664 panels each 1.8m long containing bound rubber crumb from UK post consumer tyres. Each panel has a unique patented connection system which allowed 300m of ‘ready to use’ single carriageway in five days. The trial HRH will be used as a road within the centre, freeing up existing road areas to be used as additional parking.

The HRH has been designed to be exceptionally fast to install on existing or new track beds with significant cost benefits. The cost of the HRH is estimated at less than £1.4 million per mile, a fraction of new road build costs, which average in excess of £20 million per mile.

Steve Waite, Tyres Material Project Manager, said:
“This is an interesting and unique project which has the potential to use high tonnages of recycled rubber from UK post-consumer tyres. I am pleased that the WRAP Tyres Programme has been able to award the funding to make this project possible and eagerly anticipate the results.”