Spent a good part of Monday and Tuesday driving around in Illinois. Mrs. Cow asked me a question for which I had no answer. I'm hoping some of you nice people in Illinois can help her out. What she noticed quite often was odd markings on the pavement. Sometimes just one, sometimes two and on rare occasions three similar markings close together. These resembled a square maybe 12 to 15 inches on a side which was black (tar?) with a patch of normal road colored area in the center. Sort of a circle in a box with the circle area being light colored. We also observed the million little gadgets along the road centerlines every so-many feet that are about 10 inches long by about 4 inches wide and which must serve some valuable purpose. These must be a PITA when it is time to resurface the road.
Aerial control for speed monitoring?
I suspect to first things you described were for an automated traffic count and second one may have little reflectors and are lane markers to be illuminated my head lights at night.
Those are to prevent surveyors from prorating the right-of-way width B-)
These were in super rural areas, general residential areas, all along our paths.
Anybody want to make a bid to buy the world's biggest bottle of catsup and the land on which it resides? They are taking offers.
A quick google search lead me to a usenet discussion.
Scroll down to the 2nd response. The links were broken, but searching Raised Pavement Marker on the IDOT website found this pdf.
Melita
That sounds like what we saw on the center lines. They are depressed into the road and are only a fraction of an inch higher than the standard road surface. We didn't do much night driving, but when we did I didn't notice them doing what they are supposed to do. Quite a few were missing so they probably do get whacked by snow plows to some extent. I looked at one up close and didn't really see anything too reflective.
The squares with circles is the bigger question.
