City Council members see red over white lines

The city's line painting program made for discussion at
Monday's Council session

The city's approach to roadway painting gained some attention Monday night, that as Councillors Niesh and Cunningham offered up some commentary on the state of the city's roadway white lines and how the current work has come up lacking.

Over the last few years, the City has made use of a Prince George firm Yellowhead Pavement Marking which tries to make the most use of our sunnier months of May to August to put down the roadway markings.

The topic came up at the end of Monday's Council session, as Councillor Niesh raised some concerns towards the road line painting program, expressing his disappointment over the quality of work and the quality of the paint being used.

"I believe the majority of the problem is caused by the fact that we can't use the good paint that they used to have back in the day, you know because of environmental concerns. So now we're using a paint that's just not,  if you look at it not nearly as thick and as durable as it used to be ... 

I really feel that this year, we should be moving the program later in the year. You know we're not even making it through half a winter and our lines are gone, our crosswalks are gone our yellow lines are gone.  It's scary for a pedestrian to cross a crosswalk when it isn't there anymore"  

Councillor Cunningham took the topic a bit further expressing some disappointment in the work of the most recent contractors, suggested that the city investigate finding a new contractor or returning the program back to the city operations staff. 

The Councillor noting that there are safety issues at hand with some of the diminished quality of the lines on the city streets. 

"I've noticed we've been using Yellowhead for the last what two years, three years  and since we've started using them this has been as problems come. Now I don't know if there are other contractors out there, or if we should go back to our own painters. 

When we used our own painters  on crew we didn't seem to have this problem you know they could paint during the year all year round. Since we've had contractors we've had nothing but problems with our lines.

Mayor Brain brought the topic to a close observing that the Operations team would investigate the situation and report back to council later this spring.

Councillor Randhawa also raised the annual topic of the city's potholes and if a plan was in place to adress them soon. 

In reply the Mayor observed that the area was currently still in the midst of the freeze/thaw cycle and that the topic of pot holes would get a look a little later in the month or in April.

You can review the conversation on roads from the City's Video archive starting at the one hour, seven minute mark.

For more notes on Monday's Council Session see our Council Timeline feature here.

A wider overview of past council themes can be found from our Council Discussion page.