By COLE REIF
Great Bend Post
Picking the right paint has recently been a problem for the City of Great Bend and other area communities. The Great Bend City Council approved a quote from Venture Corporation last week to apply pavement markings to several intersections in town.
City Administrator Logan Burns said applying the street markings is usually a task city crews can handle but after trying multiple manufacturers, the street paint is not lasting.
"We went to 10th and Washington toward the latter end of last year," said Burns. "We went back and repainted that. We're having issues with paint. We've tried three or four manufacturers of paint. Whatever Road Safe has, seems to stick a little bit better. It seems like a week or two after we put that down, it was already gone."
Great Bend has a City Connecting Link Improvement Program (C-CLIP) project starting on Main Street and 10th Street, handled by Venture. Road Safe is already a sub-contractor for this work, so the city requested a quote for them to do additional pavement markings. Assistant City Engineer Hitha Kadiyala said this approach will help the city save time and money by reducing mobilization costs to paint eight intersections along 10th Street.
"The eight intersections on the list are what we are prioritizing since they are on the highway and it's essential for the safety and traffic flow," said Kadiyala. "Meanwhile, we are going to be looking into a viable solution in-house for other intersections. We just want people to know we are prioritizing these intersections, but we're not neglecting any other intersections on our list as well."
The price to mark the eight additional intersections is $59,312.19.
The intersections getting pavement markings on 10th Street include at Frey, Main, Washington, Kansas, Harrison, Grant, Patton and K-96 Highway.