marking new pavement for striping

State in your contract what you intend to do and for how much.

I am employed as the company surveyor for an asphalt contractor and what is wanted by each crew varies. One crew super wanted me to give him offsets in inches every 50 feet. After much heated discussion, that did not happen.

All they need (given proper mindset and training) is the beginning and ends of tapers. The rest is done with a string line. That is what I would bid which might just give you an edge in the bidding process.

Good luck

How is it being painted? Long line truck? If it's by truck you just need to mark CL every +/- 500ft. The truck driver will generally paint off an offset on the truck he sights against the edge of pavement.

No matter what preserve your pass/no pass locations. They're very time consuming to replicate if they're due to passing sight distance.

Steve

On a standard 2 lane highway, we generally only mark the pattern changes(skip to double solid, ect) and gaps for intersections. We locate the pattern changes with sub-meter GPS prior to construction, then place a stake at the edge of R/W denoting the pattern change. If the stake gets knocked out, you can always set it out with GPS.

The striping contractor can generally use the paving seam as a guide. In my experience the paint truck driver will make a test run down the road, applying temporary pencil thin guide marks. They will then drive back and access the alignment. Once the inspector is satisfied with the guide marks, the paint truck sprays down some color.

The turn pockets get surveyed prior to construction and staked out prior to painting. I make sure and pull string line and mark it well enough that there is no uncertainty as to how it is to be striped.

Here you can see they have placed their guide marks based upon the paving seam. They are using it as a guide to mark the fog stripe at a consistent lane width. Everything is based upon centerline.

Generally roads are designed with perfect simple circles and tangents. When the paint truck applies the guide marks, they tend to be more like a railroad curve (spiral into a simple curve and spiral out). This is also how people drive the road. If you have had to best fit an alignment to painted centerline, you probably have noticed how the BC's & EC's don't always fit as well as the middle of the curve.

Cat Tracking

This is kind of a hijack and no help to you, Joe. I'm sorry, but I just wanted to know if anyone else remembers flipping a rope and walking down along it with a paintbrush nailed to some lathe and a can of white paint.

Don

around here

Before any striping is covered or dug out, the contractors themselves do the same type of offset staking around here.

At some point outside of their work area the place an offset stake at beginning and end of each stripe on the roadway.

Passing lane stakes will be on which side of centerline stripe belongs.

The come back and mark the end of straight sections and pull bailing twine and paint the small stripes to guide the paint vehicle.

On the curves they have more offset stakes.

They do miles of it in a day.

It is probably ± 0.25ft

marking striping

Thank you all for your replies. I see that there are a LOT of different ways this gets done. I'm going to talk to the contractor this morning and ask more specific questions now that I have an arsenal of options to present him.
Thanks again.

Place your markers every 100' stomach side down

Nice -
I contacted a couple painting contractors who do a lot of highway striping for the state of Arizona, and was referred to the ADOT Standard Specs, which require us to stake the lines at 50' intervals. Not a lot of decisions left as to how to write up the proposal.
Thank you all for your responses, even the funny ones.

Takes a lot to laugh, takes a train to cry 😉

Your options are in your choice of procedure and accuracy of placement for each paint spot as opposed to setting a nail with bottle cap every 50ft.

Stringline or TS or GPS each point.

After all it for a painted stripe and not 3D control.

B-)

Jeeze! 50'? That is excessive.
Being a Resident Engineer, here is my advice. First of all do everything in formal written form.

Call the striping subcontractor and discuss the Standard Spec. requirements. Ask them what control they will need to stripe the project. Then follow up with a formal written dialog repeating what was discussed and request a written reply. I would assume that they would be agreeable to 100' in the tangents and 50' in the curves (even that is excessive).

Then send in a written RFI to the general contractor requesting an exception to the standard. They will forward this to the agency. The Resident Engineer should have no problem with approving an RFI like this because they will include language in the approval clarifying that the general contractor is still liable for meeting the standards.

If the job is a sure thing, perhaps 50' stations just equates to more profit.
If it isn't a sure thing, you will probably be under-bid by another company taking the risk that the agency will be happy with whatever control is set as long as the striping turns out as expected.

Having a written RFI means you are protected as long as you do your part right.

I talked with 2 striping contractors - both referred me to the ADOT specs. I'll call out the specs in my proposal and say that stiping will be staked to spec.
I do appreciate all the feedback and suggestions.