"talk Wednesday to industry experts and tour the oilsands region"
I wonder what century they will 'discover' that the raw product from there is almost like asphalt. It can be blended with 'normal gravel' to reduce the cost of the current product by about 20%. It can be used as a replacement for asphalt large acreages and such if dust control and tracking mud is an issue. Repairs are as difficult as a grader of some sorts and some form of packing it in place, like the grader and normal traffic. It doesn't dust up and on a really hot day it can be made to stick together quite well.
The advantage of true tarsands sand is that it is fractured sand, rather than sand that is in a ball shape such as in most glacial tills. That means light contact will lock to itself with little or no effort.
With the amount of raw material in Alberta and Sask. it should be on the streets for about $3 a rail-car and still make a profit for the owners, the tax-payer.. Material handling is extra. Gravel has to be replaced yearly, tar-sands would need a wall of water to dislodge it after it had been packed. Over 20 years those communities that have gravel roads would save a lot of money. Local subdivisions would do their own repairs, takes a trailer hitch to pull a spreader and a six-pack to slowly drive over the whole repair so it stays in place. Do that once a years and you never have to hit another pothole.
I wonder what century they will 'discover' that the raw product from there is almost like asphalt. It can be blended with 'normal gravel' to reduce the cost of the current product by about 20%. It can be used as a replacement for asphalt large acreages and such if dust control and tracking mud is an issue. Repairs are as difficult as a grader of some sorts and some form of packing it in place, like the grader and normal traffic. It doesn't dust up and on a really hot day it can be made to stick together quite well.
The advantage of true tarsands sand is that it is fractured sand, rather than sand that is in a ball shape such as in most glacial tills. That means light contact will lock to itself with little or no effort.
With the amount of raw material in Alberta and Sask. it should be on the streets for about $3 a rail-car and still make a profit for the owners, the tax-payer.. Material handling is extra. Gravel has to be replaced yearly, tar-sands would need a wall of water to dislodge it after it had been packed. Over 20 years those communities that have gravel roads would save a lot of money. Local subdivisions would do their own repairs, takes a trailer hitch to pull a spreader and a six-pack to slowly drive over the whole repair so it stays in place. Do that once a years and you never have to hit another pothole.