2023-08-18 11:30:00
Since Saturday August 12, it has escaped few motorists who usually drive on the E42 between Houdeng and Manage towards Charleroi, this section of motorway is completely closed to traffic. The reason for this closure, road resurfacing work. “A total of 15,000 tonnes of asphalt have been removed and will be re-restored by the end of the work over a 5-kilometre section, which represents 100,000 m² to be treated”, explains Héloïse Winandy, spokesperson for SOFICO, project manager who worked with SPW Wallonia. “The complete closure of a highway is not something that happens very often. It is even exceptional. This has been made possible here thanks to the motorway triangle in which this section of motorway is located between the E42/A15 which is connected to the E19/A7 and the A501, which has made it possible to easily set up diversions and work faster.”
In fact, when complete closure is not possible, such work requires working lane after lane. “It would have lasted more than a month whereas here, in about ten days, everything should be over. The work was planned during school holidays, which made it possible to limit the impact on users as much as possible. The complete closure also allows maximum safety for the sixty workers who are present on the site on a daily basis.”
Consequent works which should indeed last only about ten days in total. “The workers work seven days a week, day and night, even on August 15. Thirty trucks also took turns daily to recover the asphalt removed and bring in new ones.”
Circular economy
Several layers were necessary to guarantee a perfect road whose coating could last about fifteen years with, all the same, a small ecological point. “We planed 15 cm of bitumen which went directly to our recycling plant and then returned to the site”, explains Nicolas Bughin, spokesman for the company Wanty. “We thus use the principle of the circular economy by resting 50% of the planed asphalt in the lower layers of the same roadway. Each year, between 70,000 and 80,000 tonnes of waste thus collected is recycled in our factory.”
The site will be finished on Thursday 24 and the road will be accessible again from 5am.
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