Stay in your… wait, where are the lanes? City behind in painting road markings: critics blame budget cuts, poor-quality paint By: Malak Abas Posted: 6:09 PM CDT Wednesday, Jun. 19, 2024

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This article was published 19/06/2024 (834 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The City of Winnipeg has faced significant delays in its road-marking operation this year, blaming faulty equipment and wet weather.

However, critics are pointing to budget issues and the use of less-durable paint for the missing white and yellow lane dividers, edge markings, intersections, pedestrian corridors and crosswalks around the city this spring.

Lane marking typically begins in mid-April and takes approximately six months, a yearly effort to replace faded or erased paint.

“We are behind on line painting this year,” city communications co-ordinator Julie Dooley said via email.

“The operation requires warmer temperatures and dry weather, the latter of which we’ve had very little. Our machine has also been down for repairs for almost a week. If the wet weather continues, we will be challenged to complete our line painting program for the year.”

Dooley said the machine, which the city has owned since 2008, has since been repaired and is up and running.

The machine is sensitive and prone to breakdowns, and while it’s “regrettable” that the city has only one, a new unit could cost upwards of $1.5 million, public works chair Coun. Janice Lukes said.

“They’ve got one machine to do the whole city. Even if the thing was working full time, it is a challenge,” said Lukes (Waverley West).

Meanwhile, the city has considered moving to longer-lasting options, but has not moved forward.

A 2013 trial used reflective 3M tape, a lane marking material that can last five to seven years, on a three-kilometre stretch of Pembina Highway south of Abinojii Mikanah (formerly Bishop Grandin Boulevard). A Free Press report from 2015, while the trial was underway, said the tape cost $10 a metre, while Winnipeg’s typical quick-dry alkyd paint cost 38 cents per metre.

“Paint alternatives are quite cost-prohibitive and things like tape are very time-consuming and labour-intensive, more so than line painting,” Dooley said.

Lukes said the 3M tape was “great,” but the area has since gone back to quick-dry paint. We would not be able to afford to switch to the more durable product citywide, she said.

“We’re Band-Aid-ing,” she said “I’d like to have three machines out there going to get it done.”

Lane lining services cost the city $178,000 annually; that figure includes labour, equipment and materials.

The lane-marking machine is manned by a three-person crew: a driver and operators controlling the yellow and white paint and distribution of glass beads that reflect headlights at night. Intersection and crosswalk painting typically starts in early May and takes eight to 10 weeks to complete, and are marked using three small hand-controlled paint machines.

The paint used for all lane markings dries in less than a minute.

The Manitoba Heavy Construction Association has brought the issue of deteriorating lane markings to the city and province in the past. President and CEO Chris Lorenc said MHCA has found that while there isn’t an argument about the merits of other options, it has become a risk-management issue because of cost.

“There’s a cost-risk assessment, and the city and the province have made it,” Lorenc, who is also the chair of Manitoba’s SAFE Roads Committee, said Wednesday.

“Personally, I don’t agree that we should be on the cheap as it relates to line painting, because it is a matter of everyday driving and everyday safety. I would welcome, and I think the vast majority of drivers would welcome, an enhanced investment in quality lane painting.”

He asked that drivers slow down and proceed with caution when encountering construction workers on the road any time, but especially if the road has faded or missing markers.

“When you approach the late fall and proceed into winter, until you reach May or June, depending on when they’re able to do the painting, you’re at the mercy, often, of guessing whether or not you’re in the right lane. And that’s not safe.”

The cycling community has noticed the lane-marking process has been delayed this year, Bike Winnipeg director Patty Wiens said.

“It’s been really, really late this year… it really seems like everything is taking a longer time,” she said.

She’s heard of cyclists considering “guerilla infrastructure” tactics, similar to when people shovelled the city’s bike lanes to combat slow-moving snow clearing in winter 2022, and delays in painting make already-unsafe roads even more dangerous.

“Paint isn’t infrastructure. It doesn’t make us safe, the paint itself does nothing,” she said.

“And now that they’re… not putting (the paint) in, it creates even more of a hazard for us, because then drivers are not even aware sometimes that there is a bike lane.”

For truckers, who are often on the road on all hours, the clarity of lane markers is crucial, said Manitoba Trucking Association executive director Aaron Dolyniuk.

“Especially at nighttime, it becomes harder to sort of keep aware of where the edges of a lane are,” he said.

While it may seem like a minor aspect of road safety, line-marking issues are “an additional concern in a constellation of road safety issues where we’re falling behind” in the province, said Ewald Friesen with CAA Manitoba.

“I think it’s one of those irritants that we encounter, that we’re probably frustrated by in the moment, and by the time we get home, we probably sort of forgotten about,” he said. “But all of this creates a road-safety picture which is unsettling. “

Different cities handle lane markings differently: in Calgary, approximately 35 per cent of painted road markings are made with epoxy, a more expensive but more durable substance that requires maintenance every three to four years.

In Vancouver, city council was discussing introducing a regular maintenance strategy in November 2023, as lane painting was done only on a when-necessary basis.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca