05-19-2013, 04:37 AM
Going into town the other day, watching the roadwork cleanup that was going on, I saw something that was a revelation. There was a crew pulling up the crazy wavy lines. It wasn't paint, it was like some kind of tape. Then beside that, there were a series of dotted white lines that were much more straight, kind of a guide for the actual painting of the stripes.
While being an advocate of leaving mainland stuff on the mainland, this is a case where mainland technology is needed. On the mainland, there is new road equipment that I watched up by the Tacoma bridge before I left. There is a big ripper that grinds out the old pavement, followed by some improved asphalt spreader, then rollers followed by some computer controlled stripe painter. The stretch on 11 would take about 3 days with this equipment.
This is the reason for the whacked out roadwork here. They are using very outdated equipment that is extremely manually intensive. It might be by intent, keep it manually intensive for the jobs, or that the scale of road work isn't cost effective to invest in all new road equipment or just that the state DOT doesn't have the funds. Anyway, it explains a lot and is going to explain the Hwy 130 widening that is going to commence soon.
"This island Hawaii on this island Earth"
While being an advocate of leaving mainland stuff on the mainland, this is a case where mainland technology is needed. On the mainland, there is new road equipment that I watched up by the Tacoma bridge before I left. There is a big ripper that grinds out the old pavement, followed by some improved asphalt spreader, then rollers followed by some computer controlled stripe painter. The stretch on 11 would take about 3 days with this equipment.
This is the reason for the whacked out roadwork here. They are using very outdated equipment that is extremely manually intensive. It might be by intent, keep it manually intensive for the jobs, or that the scale of road work isn't cost effective to invest in all new road equipment or just that the state DOT doesn't have the funds. Anyway, it explains a lot and is going to explain the Hwy 130 widening that is going to commence soon.
"This island Hawaii on this island Earth"
*Japanese tourist on bus through Pahoa, "Is this still America?*