Not as crazy as Solar Roadways —

The Netherlands might trial plastic roads

Plastic roads are claimed to be quieter and longer-lasting than asphalt surfaces.

VolkerWessels, a major construction company with interests in the Netherlands and the UK, would like to replace asphalt road surfaces with Plastic Road: a new road surface that, as you've probably guessed, is made from plastic.

At the moment, Plastic Road (Dutch) is more of a concept than a real product, but the Dutch city of Rotterdam has already signalled its interest in trialling Plastic Road on its "street lab." Rolf Mars, VolkerWessels' road chief, said they hope to go from concept to real plastic roads within three years.

Plastic Road sounds pretty crazy, but it has a lot going for it. For a start, VolkerWessels says it'll be made entirely from 100% recycled material. Plastic Road will be prefabricated in big slabs, so that new roads can be laid more quickly—and, perhaps most intriguingly, Volker says they'll last three times as long as asphalt, due to better weather and abrasion resistance. As you can see from the concept images, Plastic Road is hollow, with plenty of ducting space for cables and pipes.

The biggest questions—cost and safety—remain completely unanswered, however. Asphalt roads are relatively cheap because they can be laid with huge, mostly automated machines. Asphalt also offers a lot of grip in the wet and other inclement conditions, and road noise is generally very good. Plastic tends to be slippery when wet, and it might be quite costly to make Plastic Road entirely out of recycled materials. Volker says that Plastic Road will be "ultra quiet," but it provides no justification for that claim.

Presumably VolkerWessels has a special variety of plastic in mind that is grippy in the wet, or some kind of texture that can be applied to make recycled plastic more gripful. For now, though, we remain sceptical (though not as sceptical as we are about Solar Roadways).

Moving forward, Mars says VolkerWessels is looking for partners in the plastics industry, and companies in the recycling sector that might be able to help fuel manufacturing of the road segments.

As far as real-world deployments go, it sounds like Rotterdam will be the first to trial some Plastic Road. Jaap Peters, of Rotterdam's civil engineering bureau, said: “We’re very positive about the developments surrounding Plastic Road. Rotterdam is a city that is open to experiments and innovative practical applications. We have a ‘street lab’ available where an innovation like this can be tested."

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Channel Ars Technica