Materials selection for structured horizontal road markings: financial and environmental case studies

Abstract

Introduction: On majority of roads, horizontal road markings are essential safety feature that must be periodically renewed to maintain appropriate performance. Results: The use of a premium road marking system resulted in prolonged the service life as compared to a standard system, which would be financially-neutral in the long term despite much higher unit and initial costs; advantageously, 54% less glass beads and 63% less paint would be required over 10-year life cycle. When these products usage savings are recalculated into raw materials consumption, the premium system would demand about 21% more of titanium dioxide, but that would be offset by approximately 25% reduction in the consumption of acrylic resin and circa 97% reduction in organic solvents usage and emissions. Conclusions: The results from this analysis can be used by road administrators to select the best systems, by policy makers seeking minimisation of environmental impacts, and by contractors who won performance tenders.

Glass Beads for Road Markings: Surface Damage and Retroreflection Decay Study

“…The sustainability analyses confirmed for the nth time that the lowest overall resource consumption was correlated with the longest service life. Any argumentation that the furnished values were only estimates and might correlate weakly with the outcome from the field can be dismissed upon examination of our previous work, where the data were collected in the field and the same patterns were observed [32,33,38,40,41,68]; indeed, it was those data which prompted us to undertake this effort. It should be noted that similar relative performance of standard and premium GB was also measured in the field in the United States [63].…”

“…The analysis provided herein was not concerned with one very important practical aspect: financial analysis. Previously published calculations have demonstrated that long-term financial savings are possible with high-end RM materials despite higher unit costs [38,41]. It is worth emphasising that such financial savings would bring the most benefits if contractors were awarded long-term maintenance contracts with strict minimum performance requirements but a simultaneous choice of material selection.…”

“…Because two independently prepared cradle-to-grave Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) done according to the standard ISO 14044 established that the key parameter for sustainability of RM was their service life [62,64], it was possible to simplify the calculation of environmental friendliness for the analysed RM and concentrate only on the usage of raw materials, according to a previously employed methodology [41]. The use of such a methodology was possible and appropriate because at the end of their service life RM are not replaced, but renewed with another layer of paint and glass beads [3].…”

“…In addition, as a confirmation test for the loss of R L through abrasion, the outcome from a turntable test done by an independent party is given. Furthermore, the aspect of sustainability was addressed through the analysis of the long-term material consumption needed to maintain a given R L , according to the methodology employed in our previous efforts [41]. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report in which the progress of GB surface deterioration is addressed and visualised.…”

Rethinking transport – towards clean and inclusive mobility (Highlights of the 2020 Transport Research Arena conference)

“…The final set of papers focuses more directly to diverse decision-making challenges that exist at various design, planning and policy levels in mobility systems. Starting from the roadway scale, Burghardt & Pashkevich focus on a challenge of selecting materials for horizontal road markings [23], while Budzynski et al focus on assessing road restraint system functionality [24]. With a lens on asset management of large number of bridges, Allah Bukhsh et al 1 propose a framework for the development of optimal multi-year maintenance plans [25].…”