Town officials last week approved an approximately $46,000 contract for the installation of six decorative crosswalks on the newly repaved one-way stretch of Elm Street.
The crosswalks, to be installed between Main Street and Park Street—one at Main, two at South, one at The Playhouse and one at Park—will be “an 8-foot-wide durable thermal plastic-impressed surface system called ‘Traffic Patterns XD’ by Ennis Flint,” Town Engineer Maria Coplait told members of the Board of Selectmen at their Sept. 16 meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference.
“The thermal traffic surface will be heat-stamped at each crosswalk, embedding it into the pavement, similar to the installation that was done at the library. Once the impressed surface system installation is complete, retro reflective lines will be striped on either side of the crosswalk installations. Rocco Iadarola is one of the two certified installers for Traffic Patterns XD in the state, and they perform 95% to 98% of all the installations.”
First Selectman Dionna Carlson and Selectmen Steve Karl and Amy Murphy Carroll voted 3-0 in favor of the $46,264 contract with Waterbury-based Rocco Iadarola Co.
“Right now, his schedule is such that if we do give him a go-ahead, he could start as early as next week and anticipate two to four days of construction,” Coplit said. “He has quite a queue after that, so if we don’t get him started next week, it would probably be a little over a month before we could get him back. But he says that the installation is, especially with this temperate weather, once it’s in, it just takes about 20 minutes to set and then it can be drivable. So there’s two options that we can look at. We can either have them work on half of the street at a time and keep one lane of traffic open. It’ll just take a little bit longer for all the installations or we could close off the area to vehicular traffic for two days and have him be able to have full access to the full width.”
Ultimately, the selectmen decided to have the first stretch of Elm, from Main to South, entirely closed for the crosswalk work, and to keep one lane of traffic open for the stretch between South and Park.
The selectmen asked whether the various scenarios would cost the same (yes, cost is based on square footage), whether the contractor handles traffic control (no) and when the contractor works (typically 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.).
Coplit and Public Works Director Tiger Mann said the crosswalks would resemble the one crossing Maple Street from the library to the Center School Lot.
Karl asked about the reflective material in the crosswalk.
Mann said there are “glass beads” in the crosswalk.
“So they put the epoxy paint down, the stripe down, when they place glass beads over the top of it, the glass beads, and the glass beads then adhere to the paint itself,” he said. “And that gives you your retro reflectivity when light strikes. It’ll come back to the eye of the driver.”
Is the surface slippery to cyclists?