news

       In Ottawa’s spring, when tulips are blooming and birds are chirping, city workers take to the streets to repaint street lines and other markings that have been nearly invisible due to snowplows, sand and traffic.
       Now they have a new tool in their long battle – a high-tech truck that can extend the paint line three to four times longer than before.
       The city’s new methyl methacrylate (MMA) spray machines are currently working overtime as crews rush to renew markings at more than 6,500 intersections and countless miles of roads and bike paths.
       The $747,000 truck was purchased in 2021 and was fully operational last summer after staff were trained to operate it.
       MMA coatings consist of pigmented resin and catalyst and typically cure within 15 minutes of application. Then spray a layer of small glass beads to make the marking reflective.
       Jared Hebbs, project manager for signs and road markings in the city’s Department of Transportation Services, said that while his department still uses acetone and water-based paints, MMA is quickly becoming the preferred choice.
       ”We thought it would be a great product for us,” Hubbs told CBC News earlier this month. “Now that we’re using it, we’re seeing huge benefits that it provides.”
       MMA trucks can carry up to three crew members: a driver in the front and one or two painters/operators in the back, depending on the job being performed.
       One of the disadvantages is that painting requires warmer temperatures, so while other city road painting trucks typically start work in early May and work until November, MMA trucks typically work from June to September.
       While the construction season may be a little shorter, the marks it leaves behind will last longer before they need to be repainted, Hubbs said. In the long run, that should cut down on the time road crews spend repainting faded markings each spring.
       About a decade ago, when the federal government ordered municipalities to switch to low-volatile organic compound (VOC) paints, which are better for the environment but much less durable, the number of public complaints about road markings doubled from fewer than 600 calls a year to more than 1,200.
       Complaints leveled off again around 2017, but then plummeted again a few years later. Hubbs said the coronavirus pandemic may have been a factor, as cities saw fewer cars, bikes and pedestrians.
       In 2019, the City Council decided to intensify the painting of city roads, paying particular attention to busy pedestrian crossings and other key areas.
       “We will continue to implement our solution to use durable road marking materials on major roads with the aim of reducing the number of complaints overall by 80%,” he explained.
       Other, more permanent methods of road marking include using thermoplastics that are put together “like a puzzle” and then glued to the road surface with a blowtorch, Hubbs said. These are used to mark bright green squares on bike paths, for example.
       The city’s road painting project employs 35 people and has a budget of $5.2 million this year alone.
       In addition to the two trucks, they use 10 smaller vehicles — think of a lawn mower that paints lines instead of mows — and work in 10-hour shifts, often at night so as not to disrupt traffic. (Some of these smaller vehicles are also equipped to spray MMA paint.)
       However, it would take them a long time to cover every corner of a city as big as Ottawa. From May to November, they would use about half a million litres of paint to cover about four million square metres of road surface.
       ”Be patient, it’s a big area,” Herbbs advised residents. “We’ll do our best to make sure everything goes smoothly.”