Posted on 12/19/2022 6:08:45 AM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Ed Baiden, who heads PPG’s traffic solution business, calls it “the beauty of our system in the U.S.” that each state has its own shade of yellow paint for road markings.
“There’s a Kentucky yellow, a Pennsylvania yellow, an Iowa yellow,” Mr. Baiden said.
And while the federal highway administration has spent years mulling a change in the width of those yellow stripes from a minimum of 4 inches to 6 inches, 24 states have already adopted the wider standard. And the rest are headed in that direction.
And that means PPG gets to sell a lot more insert-state-here yellow in the coming years.
Here’s a back of the napkin calculation: it takes about 18 gallons of paint to stripe a mile of road using 4-inch-wide markings. PPG estimates there are 8.8 million lane miles in the U.S.
An extra two inches goes a long way when the canvas is the entire country.
The Downtown-based paint and coatings maker is relatively new to the road paint game. It launched a traffic solutions business in January 2021, a month after acquiring North Carolina-based Ennis-Flint Inc. which brought that expertise in house.
The business unit has 1,300 employees and about 22 manufacturing facilities, with most of its business focused in the U.S.
It’s not just the color that separates Maine from Mississippi. In addition to paint, PPG also makes thermoplastic markings, which are extruded from a specialized truck and applied to the ground. That’s more popular in the Southern states where snowplows aren’t scraping the road.
States in the North tend to use paint.
Striping roads is a seasonable business, Mr. Baiden said. The pavement can’t be cold or wet when new paint or thermoplastic is applied.
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
The change to wider highway lines from 4” to 6” is only because of new car technology. “Self-driving” cars and lane departure warning systems can’t reliably see 4” wide stripes. They need the wider 6” stripes. I also see the wider stripes better at my age. I like them but it costs more money.
In the US standards are created either by industry, in which case they reflect the commercial interests of the parties, or by professional associations, in which case they reflect academic and technical politics.
And US standards are generally voluntary, rather than legally binding, so you can pick which standards and which options in standards to use, with or without modifications.
Yeah. RS-232 and RJ45 come to mind. 1,2,3,6 anyone?
The story I was told was that of an enterprising salesman who managed to get rid of a couple of tanks of yellow paint nobody wanted.
Wait until you se MY inch!
That makes sense. Without the center line, people tend to drive closer to the center of the road, and that is especially true when the road curves.
Yes, we do remember that pin numbering. Add in 4-6, 8-20 if you need to creep out RTS/CTS.
Michigan also has the specially compoundeded paint that becomes totally invisible when its wet.
Yep, probably just like watching yellow line paint dry.
Hey, as long as it’s not the Steelers’ baby turd yellow. :)
Indiana must’ve bought a bunch of that at a fire sale. We got it here, too.
Oh it’s not just the shades. You’ve got the overall thickness. Also the level and kind of reflective stuff in the paint so it’s shiny when car lights hit it. Just think of how complicated it is to match house paint. And then add 2 or 3 more “factors” to the paint.
Meanwhile in AZ we use completely terrible paint that becomes invisible when wet.
LOL. I only used 2,3,7 (and ground) on D-25. But, old times, eh?
Too late.
I’m posting now from a section of St. Pete where all the streets are pink.
5.56mm
How? Paint is paint--doesn't matter what color it is, the company is still gonna sell it.
LOL, that was great.
And why did 4” do just fine for decades?
Every change made just costs more. None ever cost less.
Most county roads in Oklahoma have big rocks in the ditch where the grader operator shoved them. There are no lines. There are no signs either.
I asked the co commissioner how many of his operators had been to grader school to learn how to properly grade a gravel road. “We don’t need none of that junk.” Which is why they are all graded flat, never scarified and have no ditches or crown and are always muddy and full of potholes.
I don’t know where the money goes in Oklahoma except that they never have enough and there is very little show for what they get.
Excellent scene!
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