Innovative road rehabilitation project wins Good Roads’ Municipal Paving Award

Durham Region took a hands-on, real-world approach to testing a new way to rehabilitate roads, and it paid off. Our pilot project uses Hot-In-Place Recycling (HIR) technology and won the 2025 Good Roads’ Municipal Paving Project of the Year Award.

HIR is an innovative approach that was tested to determine if it would repair asphalt, extend the life of the road and reduce waste. Challenging road segments were chosen for this pilot to test the limits of this method. This approach uses heat to create natural bonds between the layers of the asphalt to help reduce water infiltration, potholes and cracking during the frequent freeze-thaw cycles we experience in Canada. With this process, the volume of aggregate materials, typically mined and trucked in for road construction, are significantly reduced, thereby lowering costs and reducing the environmental impact. No pavement waste was generated during the pilot, as all existing aggregates and asphalt cement were fully recovered and reused. This significantly lowered costs and reduced the environmental impact. Other benefits of the HIR process included faster resurfacing and with minimal traffic disruption.

The project was completed along four kilometres of Shirley Road (Regional Road 19) in the Township of Scugog, 4.2 kilometres of Regional Highway 2 in the Municipality of Clarington, a 2.2 kilometre road segment on Lake Ridge Road (Regional Road 23) in the Township of Brock, and the access road and parking lot at our Waste Management Centre on Garrard Road in the Town of Whitby.

We continue to adopt and test new technologies like HIR, through pilot projects like this to learn what works best in real-world conditions, to reduce our carbon footprint and meet our climate goals.

Good Roads’ Municipal Paving Awards annually recognize successful municipal-private sector collaborations for excellence and innovation in paving projects in Ontario.