Sign Rhode Island Travel Agency Agreement Online

Document type sign travel agency agreement rhode island online

[Music] hey everyone welcome back for another episode of new england road talk i'm conrad ledger from environmental partners and i'm joined again by art baker of indus and bobby betsold of allstate's material group guys um really good informative episode in terms of education um we had mike allen and sunan yodam from 3m and they talked about a number of different topics um autonomous vehicles um you know the new mutcd requirements which we as we got into it we realized that it's so early in the process there that we're probably going to have them back on for another episode when that information gets more finalized and the municipalities have a better idea of what to do but i thought it was really interesting especially from an asset management standpoint knowing how these municipalities are going to have to handle these pavement markings and sign signs moving forward yeah absolutely conrad and this whole autonomous uh vehicle uh subject is just a fascinating one to me and the more and more i learn about it uh just to be able to picture someday you know there's going to be vehicles with uh you know you don't have to control it it controls itself there's going to be you know i think a lot of a pressure at some point on the towns and the states to you know upgrade their pavement markings and signs but i think in the end it's going to be a real good thing from a safety point of view um you know in this episode they clarify a bunch of good things for you municipal folks on the mutcd and some other stuff so a great great episode and i think it's going to be very educational for everybody it is cool to hear and you know we we kind of get tied up in the day-to-day things sometimes with pavement markings with signage and that um you know and kind of take for granted what they are but yeah the the advancements the technology and all the different things that go involved that are involved in them and depend on them in terms of future advancements is really cool so yeah it certainly was eye opening on some of the topics for me and you know i think for our viewers will be really good for information going forward absolutely all right well without further ado here's our conversation with mike allen and yardam of 3m and everybody have a happy valentine's day happy valentine's day and uh just don't crack see your road like this all right mike and snon thanks for joining us today i just wanted to get right into it and uh why don't you guys give me an overview of of what you guys do for 3m and and what you're into uh over there yeah my name is mike allen i uh cover new england for 3m traffic safety division and uh i basically call on the the local agencies the state agencies i work with all the fabricators that make the signs and the things sit it's great to be here karna today um so my name is san jordan i'm with 3m transportation safety division i'm a global segment marketing manager responsible for our urban safety and mobility segment as well as some of our partnerships on the analytics front awesome um today's today's episode is really timely um i know uh mike you and i have had a lot of discussions about uh mutcd require requirements in the past and uh you know what the municipalities have to deal with uh in meeting those requirements so i know recently um fhwa put out a uh a call for uh information in terms of the new mutcd that's going to be coming out uh it's a pretty significant update from i believe what was 2009 could you give us a little bit of info about you know what that what the new mhgc will be and uh what the new requirements are that they're looking at for municipalities sure yeah so um uh obviously 2009 was the last time that the mutcd was updated uh at this point we have a document out um that's about 300 pages from federal highway that's uh was recently extended for agencies to review until may 14th so all of your state agencies and some of the locals are looking at and dividing out each of the components of that that document and what they're looking at is favorite markings they're looking at signing they're looking at temporary traffic control looking at all these different uh features that ultimately define what some of uh what we're doing on the roads awesome um and i know retro reflectivity was a big component of the the last mutcd especially from the asset management side of things i know a lot of a lot of the municipalities out there had to do uh put together a signed management program uh to kind of track retro reflectivity and uh so is there anything in the new requirements that uh that is in regard to retro reflectivity yeah there is we haven't had a chance to review everything as of yet what we have seen in the past most of our our comments and around sign management and asset management is around maintaining traffic sign retro reflectivity so that was updated and revised in 2013 and it basically suggested that agencies should have until june 14 2014 to implement and continue to use an assessment or management method to look at the regulatory and warning signs right and i know um in the initial requirement there was a a timeline for replacement of a lot of those signs and that's that's since been relaxed and and is no longer in place um are there any other specific requirements that the cities and towns should be knowing about in the new mutcd that's coming out as far as new standards we haven't been able to review all of them as of yet the ones that we're seeing that are most recent from the last mutcd were we see a lot of towns and cities replacing their um their chevrons their warning signs to indicate correct curvature correct placement we've seen recently a lot of agencies putting out contracts to addre address their real grade cross bucks and rail intersection related uh um areas and then we've seen a lot of the the one ways a lot of the uh uh a lot of this this uh focus to address um kind of the interest changes and intersections that a lot of the uh the upgrades have come from in the past gotcha and i know um there's there's a requirement uh or there's a there's a look right now at changing four inch to six inch lines on roads of over a speed of 45 mile per hour right you want to talk a little bit about that sure yeah so for so obviously pavement markings and signing kind of two separate things but yeah with with pavement markings there's a there's a ton of uh changes and recommendations that are being built um primarily because of the the machine vision right so machine vision is the autonomous vehicle how does that vehicle see all the assets on the roads how does it see lines as it sees signs and a lot of the the markings and products that are out there now are being used uh being marketed so that we can see them and redundantly the machine can see them better so um i'll let saddam talk maybe a little bit more about uh the signing piece uh from uh from an autonomous vehicle standpoint but with the pavement markings to address your question uh yeah the the recommendation uh for locals to go from four inch to six inch is a big one and that's for roads that are higher than 45 miles an hour and basically that the recommendation has been already implemented in states like rhode island where they have you know a stroke smaller infrastructure where they can manage this all the local roads all the these these roads on on a smaller level than say a massachusetts in new hampshire maine or vermont and they've seen reduction in crash crashes because of that that increase in in width of the paver markings along those lines mike staying with the long lines in the center lines you know i typically you see double yellow center lines most of the time but i do still see from time to time a single yellow line on a road can you talk a little bit about what the mutcd allows and is a single line allowed anymore and if it if it isn't is there any kind of exemptions you know with uh that might allow a single yellow line true yeah so art um that's a big one when we teach our uh our bay state roads course and we have one coming up on striping on march the second so uh if you're interested check that out but uh we we really focus and remind of these agencies because you will see agencies you know that do have singles single center lines and that is not allowed in the metcd it's allowed uh on table 2 table 3d dash 1 for placement of that single yellow line as a buffer as a barrier separation but it's not allowed down the middle of the road so in in all those cases where there are single yellow lines on those roads those need to be transferred turned over to double yellow and that could be done either through uh scarification and scarring the road to put a double yellow right down the middle line if it's you know if it's right in the middle or you could paint right over it and get it as close to as possible you see you know there's a lot of these these thinner you know narrower roads mike um where they still want some sort of safety for you know those foggy foggy evenings have you seen roads where they don't do the center line and just do the white edge lines uh to to because the problem on the thin narrow roads is if they do a double you know what people are driving on the double yellow line all the time for the most part yeah absolutely and i think having the edge line is very important the the double yellow in the middle is important as well the machines are looking for lines the machine vision you could have a brand new road hot top looks perfect but people are going to one they're going to want to speed and 2 the machine vision the camera is on the machines right now that are similar to the cameras that are in our cell phones are going to be looking for lines and if it sees that edge line or sees the center line it's going to better keep you in your lane so the lane departure features of the the vehicle are going to keep you where you need to be and if it's an edge line you know obviously the six inches are more visible than a four inch and over a period of time as we know markings degrade the reflectivity starts wearing away the durability starts wearing away and if a machine loses that edge line it has a chance of obviously if someone's not paying attention when they're driving of driving off the road because the machine doesn't see it and that's a perfect leading to my next question is that you know the durability the reflectivity on the different materials of these pavement markings you know the epoxy versus the water borne versus the thermo uh thermoplastic can you talk a little bit about that sure yeah so um the different types of products are available uh through all the fab all the paper marking installers uh and we have about five six of these these big installers in new england and they use anywhere from paint all the way up to durable tank tape so for the most part paint is is used primarily for temporary on interstate at a state level and then you move your way up the continuum to more durable and thermoplastic which is a thicker materials and then you go into your polyurea epoxy pleural component material and then you go to your durable tapes so there's a different recommendation and temperature and application for each one of these things there's not one good product that works for everyone and that's what we talk about in the bay state rhodes class but at the end of the day the agency has to look at what is what are they trying to achieve are they looking for for line presence do they want to repaint their roads year over year uh or multiple multiple times a year if so they're using a paint if they're looking for good intersection markings that hold up well with a lot of shear potentially thermoplastic is a good application if they're looking for visibility and wet reflectivity dry reflectivity if they're looking for something that dries fast regardless of the temperature especially when a lot of these resurfacing jobs get done late in the season they're looking for a polyurea which dries you know in about 30 seconds and then if they want a durable product that's going to provide high high levels of pre-formed wet and dry reflectivity that's warranted they want to tape so they kind of have a choice in what they want to to use their art really it comes down to budget uh and and what their their priorities are great it might you know and i do want to go a little bit further on the striping and tie into some treatments but i guess first thing we're talking about the single single yellow line is kind of a hot topic and then you know art and i are out here in the country a little bit um are there any other kind of i guess hot topic or things that you see out there that are residual or things that are happening people are using that um you know they kind of are looking past mutcd or or should be you know cognizant over there any kind of those things that jump off the page for you saying you know this is being used a lot but it really shouldn't be um from an met cd standpoint i i can't think of i mean the single yellow is is obviously something you see on a lot of rural roads um some of the rural roads have used um uh you know this the two-lane railroads have used rumble strips but they're they're highly effective at at lane departures and now a lot of agencies are putting a a mumble which is a a sinusoidal rumble which is uh it's a continuous uh sinusoidal groove under the surface especially for double yellow down the middle of the road and they're able to put that double yellow right into that groove to protect it from the snow plows so they can make that wet reflective or dry reflective um i know that's not answering your question but that that's something i see secondary um one of the things i see is a lot of different size stop signs and some stop signs have stopped bars and others don't have stop bars there's a regulation for that as well that's right yep yeah essentially with that every every marking there should be a sign right and vice versa yeah no and i think that's you know a lot of it is and it's i think a lot of times is that no fault to anybody it's just kind of one of those things of you know we we talk a lot about with pavement treatments and that of you know this is the way they've always done it and not always necessarily just kind of replacing what's there especially you know in communities where they may be restriping once a year and and they just go out and wherever the stripes were they they put them back over top and off we go and all is good so just didn't know if there were any of those kind of things that you were seeing that that are kind of been updated that haven't necessarily been adapted or adopted i guess shall we say um but getting back to the the striping though you know obviously we've talked a lot here about different treatments we talk a lot about pavement preservation and things with fog seals and chip seals and micro surfacing and uh you know and kind of on and on and wonder your thoughts as far as different types of striping and how they interact with the different types of treatments and any recommendations in that regard yeah great question and you know like we had talked before there's there's new innovations coming out constantly on the the pavement management and the pavement uh the asphalts that are onto our market right so when we we look at our history we look at open graded friction course on interstate roads in massachusetts right there was a directive back in the day that said no thermal plastic on the open graded friction course because it was being applied at you know 125 mils thick and it was getting hit and the skips and the edge lines were getting ripped off the road so i think we've we've learned a lot but at the same time you have new technologies like micro surfing and micro surfacing and chip seals that have a lot of liquid asphalt with that crushed layer on top of stone and it comes down to are you surface applying it or are you recessing it right so on interstate jobs everything is recessed meaning it's it's ground out about a hundred mils to put a liquid into that that application whereas with a lot of the locals it's surface applied so why not marking a surface supply depending on the size of that stone will dictate whether you should use a an 18 mil uh polyurea or or paint c mpared to say you know a 15 mil paint that's going to dried about 12 mils and it's going to leave a lot of space in between the stones so it's not going to adequately cover it so i think the questions the locals should ask is is really what um how thick uh material should how thick the stone is right and if it's a dense mix like a gap graded mix um you know potentially they can they can put uh closer to a 15 to 20 15 mil right application whereas when we get to the some of the ultra ultra thin bonded wearing course courses on the interstates we're going up to 30 mils because the stone is so s so large that we want to cover the voids to to help make sure that the lines are visible excellent you know i guess one follow-on on that and you mentioned a little bit in terms of a lot of the work being done in the fall and i i think the question i get asked a lot of times and and i bet art and conrad get the same thing is when you do get into that october november um and now you need to stripe a road what are your what is the best course of action in terms of saying do do does a community go and put a temporary out there to carry them through winter do they wait and do the permanent in the spring you know what what's what's kind of the best guidance on that as far as how to handle that type of finished striping on a project that may be late in the year yeah it's a great question i was talking to massdot one of the construction engineers about about having a hard date as a cut off and in theory it works but that temperature range changes every year right so the things that we look for in the paver marking world right we look at at how late we can go with a a durable liquid like a polyurea something that can go down at 30 degrees or sub 30 and still dry instantaneously whereas epoxy paint thermoplastic they don't handle the cold temperatures as well right so the things to look for in there are has the road it has a road been salted is there brine on there is there uh has there been prolonged rainfall and if it has rained a lot in the fall we have we see a uh the road sweating in the mornings right and it's it's not dry if it's not going to be dry there's no super marking that will go down when it's wet now that i know of um and and ultimately the dew and the frost are the enemy so how can agencies uh you know prevent against that you know i think bobby like you said i think they put down a temporary marking if it's that late in the season put down a temporary marking look for that good window either go and put down you know a polyurea or a temporary paint and and get through the winter and then come back and put that that marking down in an ideal conditions con contact the manufacturer like 3m contact uh the the installer the pavement marking installer and ask them based on the product that they're using what is the ideal temperature uh for installation excellent it's a good point too because you know i feel like uh you know everybody's always jamming at the end of the end of the season to get all their their paving finished and complete for the winter and everybody forgets about striping the road afterwards they always forget that there's ideal temperatures to put those down at um and you know nobody wants to go through the wintertime with no stripes on the road either so it's it's a catch 22. um conrad let me just point out before you move on for all our pavement manager viewers is preparation of these pavement markings before you take on some of these surface treatments in some cases they they do have to be ground down or removed so just something to keep in mind to consider for uh successful pavement preservation projects absolutely um you know mike you talked a little bit about autonomous vehicles and and the industry kind of gearing up um for that inevitability of of them kind of uh being uh found a lot on our roads so uh why don't you want to talk a little bit about what the industry is doing to kind of prepare for that and what maybe municipalities especially on their level um should be considering when they're installing pavement markings or signs sure yeah so i'll take the paper markings one first then i'll pass it on to sinan really from a pavement marking standpoint which is kind of where we're at with the vehicles that are on the road right now like i said the cameras that are on the cars are similar to the cameras in our cell phones and they're looking for for the lines and there are really three components of that that they're that they're looking for they're looking for the contrast the white or the yellow against that black asphalt or backdrop and that gets a lot more difficult when you go on a concrete bridge deck or concrete road because the concrete is white by nature so in that case contrast tape or contrast marking with a white or yellow in the middle and a black on the edge will give the cameras the ability to see that better the third thing that cameras are looking for is the wet reflectivity and by design you know manufacturers like 3m have created products that are redundant in that they they provide dry they provide wet reflectivity they provide retained reflectivity uh for a period of time and and they're they're good for you know the users of today but then the machines of tomorrow so maybe i'll let sanan talk a little bit more about uh kind of the paver marking uh side of uh autonomous sure um maybe i'll just take a step back and uh clarify the description of the autonomous vehicle because we have we have been hearing the term very broadly in the industry however there's sometimes a misuse of the terminology so uh in a very simple set if we we can we can see these technologies as assisted driving technologies that we have today in most of the new vehicles that they come in the package of lane keep assist or lane departure warning or traffic sign recognition and those are those have been on the roads for a while and they are out there and they are currently utilizing the uh the inference the physical infrastructure as it is and if you go to further uh in the in the upper end of the of the technology then you have the full autonomy and connectivity that's where the 5g becomes important that's where the digital infrastructure becomes important so it is really a combination of physical infrastructure and digital infrastructure working together for both assisted driving and then the the uh full autonomy for these vehicles so what we have seen is and what the experts say is all these lane keep assist and lean departure warning technologies uh first they are really expected to work and they are showing some promise for reducing excellence fatalities which is which is great i mean when we look at this from a from an infrastructure perspective we understand that the providing the consistent reliable lane guidance in all the conditions as mike alluded to in day and night wet and dry is really a top priority or should be a top priority for traffic engineers and technology officers in in the agencies and as we look forward to further driver assistance systems and fully connected and autonomous vehicles then these highly detectable highly consistent and reliable pin markings still remain important feature and with the connectivity and the future proofing of the roadways becomes important and we are seeing some examples of it across the nation in different in different parts of the nation where actually different consortiums are coming together to really resolve this both from a physical infrastructure perspective from connectivity perspective and also from the oems so that's the payment marking side and that's really that's really important for these technologies to um to see the roads and to uh to really be uh to to for the for the systems to uh to behave uh behave uh correctly and there's a signing piece of it and uh the designing piece of it is really interesting it's really open for some uh innovation and uh for some some new technologies over there and there's there are different different things that are being explored in in in states like michigan and california uh to really help with the guidance or the localization of these vehicles and these are more the processes of let's say incubating some new ideas within the industry and looking into how these technologies can solve some some new problems that that these these vehicles may may have um so uh with that i think a couple things that that we have done in terms of educating and creating some awarenesses we have some white papers that explain how these technologies work how the payment markings could be the best identified by these technologies as well as um really how the solutions work effectively and how maybe a camera system works our camera system sees the payment markings and we do have some of these tools that will help the agencies to understand the technologies as well as maybe to help them make some some better decisions as they future-proof their roadways well that's really interesting from um you know my background being asset management it it sounds like the pavement man i mean the the pavement management side of thing is going to have to evolve into striping and signing in even more detail than it has in the past um because for these vehicles to be able to travel the roads if they you know mike what you were saying and sit on what you were saying if they if these vehicles can't see those striping that striping they can't function correctly and or safely is it am i am i wrong no absolutely i think it comes down to how do agencies start proactively looking at all their markings right and how do they do they manage the minimum levels of retro reflectivity that have been proposed whether or not this new mutcd addresses that level of reflectivity from a paver marking standpoint which it kind of kicks the bucket down the road again and says you know the numbers that they're proposing the millicandela levels we don't know if they're going to be you know if an agency can hold can meet those minimums if they're in a snowplow state but i think agencies like pennsylvania turnpike agencies like um big agencies that have the the manpower to look at and say all right how do i manage my inventory of markings and how do we create a tiered solution and even some of the big cities like portland maine are are doing tiered markings uh not just one type of marking that meet the needs of all their different routes from super high adt uh to to low back country roads you know yeah so so i i have to ask because you know here at least in new england uh you know we're getting some snow right now and without getting into a long uh discussion how is snow handled i mean obviously the pavement markings are are not visible underneath it and that and signage obviously is but you know what's what's i guess the the reader's digest version of that you want to take that one sure i'll take that one i'll take the hard ones out my window bobby thinking the same thing no that's uh that's an excellent question uh so again i think um one way to look at this whole this technology is it is really about the whole system there's the the vehicle itself there's the physical infrastructure and digital infrastructure so one thing is to understand that they are they all need to work together right but specifically when it comes to the payment markings for the snow conditions it's interesting if you go back maybe a decade or two decades ago we have installed some um some technologies related to like radar detectable sorry magnetic detectable pavement markings uh that are even though they're under snow some of the snow plow states like northern california and uh or up up in the mountain regions and also in minnesota we have some installed to help navigate help those vehicles navigate so i would say it's still a challenge and there are still different technologies being considered how to best uh mitigate for that um and as the the vehicle technologies evolve as the physical and digital infrastructure start to work work and end um we'll see we'll see different solutions how to how to uh how to resolve resolve the issue but currently it is it is still uh it's a challenge for at least for the assisted driving and other other existing technologies out there for the uh for the for the passenger vehicles mike uh you talked a little bit about uh you you had a bay state roads uh training coming up what uh what organizations are out there for folks to kind of learn more about striping and and the mbtc requirements in general sure yeah um bay state roads obviously you know um all the local roads i just did training for uh for the guys up in vermont vermont local roads new hampshire local roads main local roads um rhode island local roads bay state roads and then we have other organizations in new england one specifically that comes to mind is atsa american traffic safety and services association and atsa is uh is really about we have a new england chapter that i was that i've been part of and i'm on the board and i think we try to focus on paper markings which i'm the technical chair for uh signing uh and temporary temporary traffic control and guardrail so those four components those those are where we kind of that's our sweet spot we like to do a lot of educating around those different products and those different you know low-cost safety improvements and then atsa does a lot of education through flagger training through work zone training and atsa has a national show that's going on right now that sinan's a part of that he can talk about a little bit yeah maybe just to give a couple highlights um uh first of all this is one of the i think the first first time that the elsa will be a virtual event and it's going to be one it's it's going to be interesting to get all these on-demand uh learning optio possibilities for the ad set attendees so we we do have a couple couple actually activities around education specifically when it comes to our industry uh we are looking into to your point according to some some new technologies around roadway safety asset management and how uh how what are some of the contents to know how our customers are looking into to manage their assets and uh there are some new trainings from our end about reflectivity of peanut markings what is important what is difference between rats recovery with continuous standards and of course astm type 11 sheeting the safety benefits of those technologies and new to this year we're also looking into some educational events or on-demand courses on urban safety and mobility impact detection system for the highways uh and also maybe social distancing and future wayfinding primarily with these uh the quick build projects that we are seeing across the nation uh due to covet um so in addition to these there are two uh panel discussions uh that will be around um digital printing uh both for for highways as well as uh customs customized printing technologies and also data-driven intersection improvements for for the urban environments what could be done maybe proactively in the urban urban settings to look into the areas uh and determine what might be some safety challenges how to mitigate those both from engineering and materials perspective so again i think we look forward to this uh to this engagement and we're always open to um either uh be be on online in this virtual event or or or anyone to reach out to us if they have any questions or or further interest in these courses and events that that we are holding but uh we definitely look forward to this very engaging and and uh connected event this year great uh last thing i just want to get into you know obviously we're still in the middle of this pandemic and uh i'm i'm sure 3m has has gone full bore into into ppe um and providing that to uh the folks that need it why don't you just talk a little just briefly about what 3m has done uh in their efforts to help out sure yeah as you as you know we've uh we've gone full bore into production of respirators so we manufactured two billion respirators globally in 2020 tripling production since 2019 now we're making more than 95 million respirators per month in the us alone that's more than quadrupling domestic production since 2019. we're also partnering with other companies like ford i uh in creating uh papers for first uh first responders and healthcare workers and we're accelerating all of our uh all of our products uh to make sure we meet the needs of of people and it's it's hard to meet the needs because there's such a huge need but at the end of the day you know we are doing our best to keep up that's awesome well we appreciate the efforts um you know we're we're out of time here we appreciate you guys coming on um you know a lot of great information for the local agencies um in in looking at their uh signage and striping moving forward and some of the upcoming technologies so with that being said i want to wrap up this episode of new england road talk and we'll see you next time thanks guys thank you thank you this is great guys [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you