Street Paint



My inner blob.



     Remember when there was a shortage of street paint? It was a few months ago I think and I found it very strange indeed.      Where did all that paint go? I can't imagine we've built so many new roads that they've run out of paint. And, judging from some of the roads I have travelled, they certainly didn't run out because they're repainting old stripes. Let's face it, we're talking two colors here: white and yellow. Not a hard thing to keep in stock as far as I'm concerned.
     I do have a solution for it though: stop painting so many wacky, meaningless, creatively-shaped, impossible-to-follow lines on the roads!
     At any intersection take a look at the lines that form the turn lanes. Here's an example. At one corner I use frequently, the right-hand stripe along the shoulder of the road goes straight then veers to the left as the street widens. This is meant to funnel traffic into the straight ahead lane. Fine. Good.
     But...
     Now they need to show drivers that there is a right-hand turn lane at this intersection. So, the street stripers create this blob shaped image with lines filling it in so drivers know they're not supposed to drive inside the blob. A little closer to the intersection and another lane dividing line appears between the straight-ahead lane and the right-hand turn lane.
     You would have to drive a rubber car to follow the line that curves in from the shoulder to create the blob shape then get your vehicle into the turn lane without crossing either the line-filled blob or the straight line marking the separation of the straight-ahead lane and the right-hand turn lane. You can't do it without crossing one of those sacred, solid-line lines! They're setting us up to break the law!
     If they just let the shoulder line run straight up to the intersection and put one solid stripe from the intersection back maybe ten or twenty feet, the job would still be successfully accomplished and they'd save hundreds of thousands of gallons of yellow street paint.

Show your disdain for yellow stripes!

     So, civil engineers, street planners, and developers, beware. Some people color outside the lines. I drive INSIDE the lines. So there.