BLOOMSBURG, Pa. — Line painting is starting for the spring season all over the state, and in Bloomsburg, road crews showed Newswatch 16 inside one of the two line painting trucks used in this part of Central PA.
"The lines wear off, so the roads that we paint, we paint every year," said Assistant Traffic Engineer for Operations Shawn Stille, PennDOT District 3.
There are more than 10,000 line miles in the nine counties PennDOT covers in central Pennsylvania. There are four painted lines per mile of roadway: a white edge line, a double yellow line, and then another white edge line. After the paint goes down, reflective beads appear, which is what you see at night. It will take all spring and summer to paint the lines and beads and even into the fall if the weather is right.
"Any kind of moisture on the ground is not good because when the hot paint hits the wet moisture, it splatters," said Jason Mowery, Highway Foreman 3 PennDOT District 3.
Like most other road work, line painting is weather-dependent. But if it is not raining and the temperature is above 50 degrees, crews will be out painting lines.
"Your prime day to paint would be a sunny day and low humidity. The paint dries a lot faster," Mowery said.
This means you can drive over the freshly painted line sooner. Because line painting is a moving operation, there will not be any warning signs in your area. So be on the lookout for the lead truck, the paint truck, and the supply truck.
Our supply truck, the last vehicle in line, is about 3 to 4 minutes behind the truck," Stille said.
Because that's about how long it takes for the paint to dry. When Newswatch 16 was doing this story, a tractor-trailer got in between the paint truck and the supply truck. Road crews want to warn drivers never to do this.
"Hopefully, you do not see the paint truck. If you do, you are in our queue. So the paint is wetter, and you have already crossed wet paint to get between our supply truck and our paint truck," said Stille.
You're not just driving over wet paint, but the reflectivity beads, too, which will impact how effective the reflectivity is, so try to stay as far back as possible when you see that lead vehicle.