Infrastructure upgrades often get expensive because of the materials that must be hauled in and hauled away. Arkansas avoided that expense on a stretch of Interstate 30 just outside Little Rock by crushing the old slabs and reusing the material as subbase for the new highway. According to a case study indexed by the Transportation Research Board, part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the 20-mile project avoided quarrying more than 95,000 tons of new crushed stone. It saved about $15,000 in truck fuel costs. As any work zone shows, much of a highway's needed material is already beneath it, and bringing in fresh rock is not always the cheapest option.
What actually happened on I-30
