About 160 miles of Northeast Texas highways will receive new surfaces during the summer of 2017-many in Bowie and Cass counties..
The Texas Transportation Commission approved a bid of $3.9 million from CDM Holdings of New Boston to seal coat highways in nine counties located within the Atlanta District.
"Seal coating a highway involves placing a layer of hot asphalt over the old pavement and then covering it with crushed stone," said Glenn Green, District Engineer in Atlanta. "This is a relatively inexpensive process that makes the roadway surface watertight, improves skid resistance and preserves the pavement structure."
To help keep used tires off Texas landscapes, the district is requiring the asphalt to be mixed with "crumb rubber" made from old tires.
"Using crumb rubber in our asphalt has proved to be an excellent process for seal coating our highways. The rock is less likely to pull loose, there are fewer occurrences of the asphalt bleeding through the rock and it can be used on a wider variety of surfaces," Green said.
The following highways are some scheduled to be resurfaced during the summer of 2017:
Bowie County-Farm to Market Highway 991 from U.S. Highway 67 West to U.S. Highway 67 East.
Bowie County-Highway 8 from 1840 to U.S. Highway 67
Bowie County-Highway 93 from U.S. Highway 67 to U.S. Highway 59
Bowie County-FM 2516 from U.S. Highway 59 to FM 558
Cass County-Highway 49 from Highway 155 to Marion County line
Cass County-Highway 155 from Highway 49 to Hughes Creek.