The Alaska Department of Transportation is testing a piece of equipment designed to crush ice on highways. The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reports the tool, a Raiko Icebreaker, was used for two weeks on Fairbanks roads and is headed to Anchorage for two weeks of tests. The icebreaker is made by Finnish company Sah-Ko Oy. It attaches to the front of a plow truck. It looks like a long tube and crushes ice with rows of metal spikes. The Transportation Department now scrapes ice with serrated grader blades and underbelly plows. The department's Dan Schacher says the tool did well on Fairbanks' Johansen Expressway and other high-priority roads and did best on thick ice. The 9-foot-wide, 3,800-pound device costs about $45,000, about twice as much as regular department snow plows.
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