Harwood avenue and bayly street (Reg. Rd. 22) a concrete pavement urban intersection pilot project: The regional municipality of durham

Located immediately east of Toronto, Ontario, the Regional Municipality of Durham includes 7 area municipalities with a total geographical area of approximately 2,590 square kilometres and a combined population of approximately 650,000 people. Situated in the highly developed and populated economic centre of Ontario, known as the Golden Horseshoe, Durham Region is expected to grow to an estimated population target of 970,000 by the year 2031. This growth will bring higher traffic volumes including buses and heavy trucks, which should be designed for in today’s road reconstruction projects. As part of its commitment to continually improve its service excellence, Durham Region is exploring innovative approaches to pavement design and road rehabilitation that could extend the life of its roadways and reduce overall lifecycle costs of the network. In line with this initiative, a pilot project was undertaken to reconstruct the intersection of Harwood Avenue and Bayly Street (Regional Road 22) in the Town of Ajax using a jointed plain concrete pavement design instead of a conventional asphalt pavement design. This paper provides an overview of the pilot project, highlighting key differences between concrete pavement design and traditional asphalt pavement design, and discusses construction considerations and lessons learned. This paper also outlines the construction staging that was followed and a traffic impact assessment undertaken by the Centre for Pavement and Transportation Technology (CPATT) at the University of Waterloo.