The Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) announced today that it spent at least $6 million in 2012 on street markings, covering at least 121 miles of roadway and nearly 60,000 individual markings or locations.

“Striping and street markings are key parts of the resurfacing projects that CDOT undertakes each year,” said CDOT Commissioner Gabe Klein.  “This year, we did a tremendous amount of roadway paving and marking work, which will our streets safer for pedestrians, bikes and motor vehicles.”

In 2012, CDOT’s in-house street painting crews refreshed more than 14,400 individual street markings at more than 2,000 locations across the city, including refreshing or installing new continental crosswalks, stop bars, speed humps and other markings on residential streets. 

CDOT spent particular focus on schools in 2012, beginning a program that would work to refresh the crosswalks around all of the 900 schools in Chicago every three years.  This year, the department repainted the intersections within a one-block radius of 331 schools using in-house painting crews.  In addition, CDOT installed a number of additional “safety zone” street markings in a dozen Children’s Safety Zones.

CDOT used about $300,000 in unspent American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) stimulus funds in 2012 to upgrade 264 ARRA-improved intersections with continental crosswalks, which had previously not been the standard.   

The department also completed about 38 miles of bike lane projects in 2012. The $3 million worth of projects are funded through a combination of federal, state and local funds.   Many of the projects are upgrades of existing facilities to buffered or more protected lanes. 

In 2012, CDOT completed about 80 miles of arterial street resurfacing projects, which included new thermoplastic striping as part of each project: crosswalks; stop bars; skip dashes; center lines; bike lanes and other markings. 

In total, there are about 44,000 individual new markings and about 600,000 linear feet of solid lines (for vehicle and bike lanes).  The estimated amount spent on the thousands of individual street markings in the Arterial Resurfacing Program this year is about $2 million.  

This year, CDOT also oversaw the striping of about 3.5 miles of string on the new Upper and Lower Wacker Drive, the Congress Interchange, and Franklin from Harrison to Lake Streets.  There are a few thousand individual markings along those roadways.

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