MoDOT to improve striping on William and Kingshighway this weekend

The complaints about hard-to-see lines on William Street and Kingshighway have reached the right people.

Missouri Department of Transportation crews will begin a striping project on the two streets tonight.

William Street between Siemers Drive and Kingshighway will be reduced to one lane as a safety measure during the work, scheduled to start at 9 p.m. and finish at 6 a.m. Sunday.

"We normally stripe urban areas at night," said Craig Compas, MoDOT traffic engineer for District 10. "It has the lowest amount of traffic. You don't want us out there disrupting traffic during the week, and we don't want paint being tracked across the highway."

Striping is a two-step process. First, paint is sprayed onto the road surface. Glass beads are then dropped into the wet paint, coating the surface.

The glass beads reflect headlight beams — though the technology isn't perfect, Compas said. Rain, light from nearby businesses or a combination of the two sometimes diffuse the stripe's reflective properties, he said.

"That's not just in Cape Girardeau, it's a national problem," he said. So far, the paint-and-bead method is the best available, he said.

Compas said the list of striping priorities and work dates is not published because weather often causes schedule shifts.

"We stripe year-round. The only concern is when the temperature drops or it rains," he said. "And we're at the very end of the time frame. This might be the last weekend until spring."

He said the work being done this weekend is the result of a plan to stripe urban roads twice a year and complaints phoned in to the MoDOT offices and the Southeast Missourian's Speak Out column.

"We do try to be very responsive to our customers," Compas said.

Today's work will proceed if weather permits, and MoDOT officials ask drivers to use caution when traveling around the work areas. The striping vehicles are equipped with safety devices to minimize impact from cars with inattentive drivers.

To learn more about MoDOT projects, call the customer service center at 888-275-6636 or visit www.modot.org/southeast.

pmcnichol@semissourian.com

388-3646