It is now official. The single biggest complaint we get from readers is the inability to see lane lines on streets within the city of St. Petersburg. We have discussed this problem innumerable times, but this time we come to the table with a possible solution.
To reiterate: Most of the city's streets are asphalt. When the asphalt is new and black, the white lane lines show up beautifully. But as the asphalt fades in the sun and becomes more gray, the white lane lines, no matter how recently they've been painted, become less visible.
It is a particularly bad situation at night and in torrential rain.
Florida has torrential rain?
We have it on good authority that this is true, or we wouldn't write it here. It rained so hard a couple of weeks ago that Jessie said crossing the street felt more like crossing a raging river.
Anyhow, as diligent as St. Petersburg is about repainting lane lines every few years, the fading asphalt makes even the best efforts less than successful.
As it happens, we were driving not too long ago on Whitney Road, a basic two-lane through residential neighborhoods north of Roosevelt Boulevard. Eastbound and westbound Whitney are divided by a broken yellow line, and yellow is marginally easier to see against fading asphalt than white, but not much.
Some genius from the state or the county - the county, we suspect - had the work crew first paint over the old yellow line with a broad swath of black paint. Then the crew came back and put new yellow dashes down the spine of the black, and voila! An easy-to-see lane divider.
Not only can you see the broken line in the rain, the stripe of black serves as an additional lane guide in all weather.
Why wouldn't this work in the city? Paint over the old white lines with black and then put new lane lines down.
It's cheaper than resurfacing the whole street.
Think about it.
Please excuse us while we vent a little bit here. In the nicest possible way, of course.
First, a reminder. When you write to us to let us know about a problem, please tell us exactly where it is. For example, don't give us just an intersection. We need to know which street you were on, which direction you were going, and, if it's a multilane street, which lane you were in.
Otherwise, you force us to go out and drive four ways through the same intersection and then guess at whether we've found the problem you were writing about. Thank you.
Some genius from the state or the county - the county, we suspect - had the work crew first paint over the old yellow line with a broad swath of black paint. Then the crew came back and put new yellow dashes down the spine of the black, and voila! An easy-to-see lane divider.
Second, please don't ask us to check out marginal situations. No road is perfect. There are going to be dips and ruts and manhole covers that don't fit flush with the pavement. That's the nature of roads. Something that makes your tires tremble isn't a big deal. If something makes your tires thud, that's a problem.
If you want an example, check out the manhole in the center lane of eastbound 118th Street (now called Bryan Dairy Road) between 49th and 34th streets in Pinellas Park. Now that's a thud.
And that depressed manhole cover earns our nomination as the Eyeball Jiggler of the Week.
We have a bonus EJW this week, too.
Eastbound on 23rd Avenue N approaching 46th Street is the biggest pothole we've encountered recently on a residential street. Actually, it's a booby trap for both eastbound and westbound traffic on 23rd Avenue because it's almost dead center in the street.
This baby is big enough to bury a time capsule, even if you include a Volkswagen.
So watch yourselves along there.
From the Interesting Idea Department. Each of the intersections at the four corners of the property on which Mount Vernon Elementary School sits has traffic humps that cover the entire intersection and slow traffic in all four directions. The intersections are 47th Street N at both 15th and 13th avenues and 46th Street N at the same avenues.
What's weird is that of the 16 different directions traffic can cross these four humps, some approaches to them have warnings of the traffic-calming devices and some don't.
What's up with that?
This next item takes us a little far afield, but it has an impact on everyone, so we thought it worth mentioning. It is a problem brought to our attention by Frank Berry.
It has to do with speed limit signs on interstates and other major highways. Frank thinks, as we always thought, that there was supposed to be a speed limit sign just beyond any ramp that feeds traffic onto the road. In other words, you negotiate into traffic, look up, and there's a sign telling you how fast you can go.
But, Frank tells us, this isn't always true. South of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, where Interstate 275 joins I-75 heading south, you drive for miles before seeing the first speed limit sign. The limit is 75, but you need to go a long way to learn that.
Another example is Fourth Street N entering I-275 eastbound. Even before the construction started, Frank tells us, the first speed limit sign was nearly two miles beyond the entrance ramp.
And get on the westbound Lee Roy Selmon Crosstown Expressway from northbound I-75 in Hillsborough County and try to guess the speed limit. The signs on the ramp say the limit is 45. But there are no signs for several miles to indicate that the speed limit actually is 60 once you are on the road.
It might be that the signs in all these cases, and countless others, were removed during construction projects and never replaced. But somebody needs to do an occasional inventory and replace those that are missing.
We would all appreciate it.
- Dr. Delay can be reached by e-mail at docdelay@sptimes.com by fax at 727 893-8675 or by snail mail at 490 First Ave. S, St. Petersburg, FL 33701.
