(22/3/2019) North Freo footpath has a rubber soul

The City of Fremantle is continuing to pioneer the innovative use of recycled materials in local infrastructure projects, with a footpath in North Fremantle being paved with rubber from recycled tyres.

The paving along Thompson Road in North Fremantle is similar to the rubber softfall commonly used in children’s playgrounds.

As well as making use of recycled materials, the flexible rubber footpath will also allow the trees along the path to continue to grow without creating dangerous tripping hazards and ongoing maintenance issues.

City of Fremantle Infrastructure Engineering Manager David Janssens said the new footpath was another example of the City coming up with new ways to use recycled materials.

“One of our objectives at the City is to find innovative uses for recycled materials that are not only good for the environment but also deliver a cost saving for ratepayers,” Mr Janssens said.

“As well as using recycled car and truck tyres on the top layer of the Thompson Road footpath, the base layer was made out of recycled road millings from our recent road resurfacing projects.

“Another example is late last year we resurfaced the car park at the North Fremantle Post Office using a warm asphalt mix which included 10 per cent recycled crushed glass as a substitute for traditional crushed granite aggregate.

“The amount of recycled glass used in that project was the equivalent of approximately 2640 glass bottles.”

Over the past 8 months the City of Fremantle has completed road works in 12 locations across the city as part of a $1 million capital road resurfacing program.

Those locations included sections of High Street, South Terrace and Marine Terrace in the city centre, John Street in North Fremantle, McCombe Avenue and McKenzie Road in Samson, Collick Street in Hilton, Hampton Road in South Fremantle, Livingstone Street and Moran Court in Beaconsfield and Watkins Street in White Gum Valley.

In total more than 26,000m2 of road surface has been renewed along more than five kilometres of roadway.

The works were partially funded through state government Metropolitan Regional Road Group and federal government Roads to Recovery grants.

The road millings from the City’s resurfacing projects are stockpiled to be reused as base material for other infrastructure projects like car parks, footpaths and cycle lanes.