Greener roads

27 January 2023

North Lanarkshire Council has been awarded more than £4.5 million to pioneer innovative materials for use on road building and maintenance.

Working in partnership with Transport for West Midlands, it will establish a UK Centre of Excellence for Material Decarbonisation in Local Roads.

This is one of the successful bids in the Live Labs 2: Decarbonising Local Roads competition funded by the Department of Transport and organised by The Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning & Transport (ADEPT).

The centre will develop a materials testing programme, identifying and deploying new technology for road construction, in addition to analysing and deploying recycled materials from other industries to build roads. 

A green carbon laboratory will be established to examine the role that environmentally friendly assets can play such as by using biomass from green waste to create alternative fuels and asphalt additives.

Research will also be conducted into lighting technology for local roads to determine what is needed in the future and how they can be further decarbonised.

The centre will consider alternative materials for road surfacing, crash barriers, bridges, lighting columns, kerbs and landscaping at the side of the road network. This will include how waste products, such as plastics, concrete and other demolition materials, could be recycled and utilised. 

Photo: Alan Guthrie