VICTORIA — Lower Mainland drivers will soon have an easier time seeing road lines on provincial highways, as the B.C. government begins to roll out new highly reflective paint.
The Ministry of Transportation has begun painting more than 3,000 kilometres of roads in the Lower Mainland, Pemberton, Victoria and Duncan with a new specialized formula of paint that contains larger, higher-quality, reflective glass beads.
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The beads will make it easier for drivers to see the yellow and white road lines when it’s dark and raining, and address long-standing concerns from municipalities that previous highway paint was hard-to-see and quick to wear off from the roads. Highway 1, the provincial highway that cuts through Metro Vancouver from Abbotsford to North Vancouver, will be one of the roads to get the new paint.
The changes are part of a $4-million boost to the ministry’s annual highway budget, which will help cover new, five-year maintenance contracts with private companies that will be required to paint 20 per cent more highway lines throughout the province, add second coats to areas where paint fades the quickest and better monitor the condition of highway paint on provincial roads.
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“It’s absolutely money well-spent,” said Transportation Minister Claire Trevena. “It’s a bottom-line safety thing. It’s worth the investment because it’s not going to just make people safe, but ensure they are driving more safely because they can see where the lanes are and where the edge of the road is.”
Disappearing highway lines has been one of the Ministry of Transportation’s top complaints since 2010 when Ottawa banned the oil-based highway paint commonly used by most provinces and left them scrambling to find alternatives. B.C. switched to a lower-pollution alkyd paint for coastal and northern roads, and a water-based paint in the Interior, but both were less durable and neither lasted an entire year.
Ministry officials then launched a search to develop new paint, settling after tests in 2017 on a new “high-build paint” that goes on extra thick to survive the tough winters, salt, chains and ploughs of B.C.’s Interior and north, and a “premium glass-bead” paint that provides reflection better suited to the wet coastal climate of Vancouver Island, the Mainland and the Sunshine Coast.
The glass-bead paint is being rolled out now. But the high-built paint failed its tests, after transportation crews had trouble getting it to stay at certain thickness levels exceeding 18 mils. Instead, the government has reverted back to applying its less-durable paint in two coats, which it says can be applied as thick as a total of 32 mils but is also a more costly and time-consuming process.
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The government is currently accepting bids for new highway-maintenance contractors, and Trevena said they will be required to follow the new requirements for additional painting and second coats.
“Safety is No. 1 and I’ve already come on hard that we’ve got to make sure the contractors are doing the work,” said Trevena.
One of the province’s worst highways, the Coquihalla, will be a mixture of both paints — glass-bead paint for the wet roads along the southern portion of the highway toward Hope and the double-thick paint closer to the summit where it snows.
However, while the paint might provide some improvement, it isn’t expected to last an entire winter due to the fact that the extreme weather, snowploughs, chains, sand and studded tires actually strip away the asphalt on the road in addition to the paint.
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