- Three years ago, a rubber road was brought to a rural property near Kisielice
- Later it was improved by adding an anti-slip layer
- The mayor stresses that many of his requests and appeals have been ignored
- More information can be found on the Onet.pl home page
The dream of success lasted two years. Then the obstacles started to pile up and finally turned out to be an impenetrable wall. The case has stalled and there seems to be no hope now that the road will start to cover the ground in other places in the country.
Today, Rafał Ryszczuk does not hide his regret that about a year ago the IBDiM stopped responding to the commune’s letters and e-mails, which made the case practically dead.
– It would be awkward for us to send a letter or e-mail again, since we did not receive a reply to many others. We’re in a spot. How many times can you? – asks the mayor. – Further development of this technology is impossible. The institute that could certify it does not want to talk to us about it. He just disregards our requests and contact attempts. Our earlier correspondence showed that they were not treating us seriously, because we wanted to build roads easily, while they were carrying out thousands of trials.
“We don’t care about them”
As the local government official points out, the rubber road, which was laid three years ago, is still in good condition, it still has anti-slip sprinkles and is still used by residents who are happy about this solution. The commune would like to lay further roads, but it is afraid that it will be punished for laying them.
The problem is that road builders decided that putting a rubber surface on a dirt road is not a hardening of it, but a modernization. And the modernization of the road can only be done using certified material. The foreign certificates obtained by the commune and the opinions of scientists that the “rubber band” is safe and not harmful to the environment have been of no avail. The wall made of recipes turned out to be unstoppable.
MPs who legislate could help, but their interest in this matter is practically zero.
– Polish decision-makers at the central level decided that it was better for some people in the villages to get stuck in the mud and not to be able to reach them by an ambulance than to put on this road. These people are to live like in the Middle Ages – mayor Ryszczuk comments sadly. – From under the palace of culture in in Warsaw you can’t see the province. We don’t care about them.
The rubber road in Kisielice – photo by Mikołaj Podolski
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Rubber road – is this the end of a pioneering idea?
About the rubber band that began to serve as the road, it got loud in 2017. Information circulated in Poland that someone found a solution to the problem of permanently leaky dirt roads, which are dusty in sunny weather, drown in mud after heavy rainfall, and are difficult to move at any time of the year, because even when driving very slowly, the chassis can be damaged.
Several hundred meters long worn conveyor belt, which is used, for example, in mines and which is reinforced with a steel cord, as part of the experiment was brought to one of the real estate in Goryń, the so-called a pensioner’s home in which several families lived. The surface turned out to be strong, cheap and allowed to ride even heavy equipment on it.
The only problem was possible slips, so to the test six different epoxy layers were applied to various parts of the road, adding to them, inter alia, basalt, corundum and sand to try which ones will work. The mixture with corundum turned out to be the best.
The road can even be cleared of snow if the plow is equipped with a rubber tip.
Self-government officials from the Kisielice commune were contacted by village heads and mayors from other regions of Poland, who wanted to have similar solutions at home. For now, however, everything indicates that it will not be available anywhere else.
(pc)
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