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SALT LAKE CITY -- If you think the double yellow line down the middle of the road is hard to see now, it may fade even more before it gets new paint. A worldwide shortage of road striping paint will reduce the amount of striping crews can do this summer.
The Utah Department of Transportation usually stripes more than 7,500 miles of roadway each year. But many roads in Utah and across the country will not get a new coat this year. That's because paint supplies are drying up.
"We're buying up all the paint we can," said UDOT spokesman Adan Carrillo. "We're getting letters from our suppliers that we may faces shortages of up to 50 percent this year."
Ken Berg, a UDOT maintenance planning engineer, explained, "The global demand has reduced the ability to obtain it."
That means work delays and higher prices for the paint they can buy. It comes down to a shortage of raw materials.
Berg said, "The major component of paint that makes it stick to the road and hold its color is called the resin."
Right now, makers of road paint cannot get the resin and other materials they need. The shortage also impacts plastic tapes and epoxies used on the roads.
The cost of resin is up 20 percent, the price of the paint is up more than 5 percent today, and another price hike is possible mid-summer.
UDOT Pavement Markings Manager Dan Betts said, "Obviously, our high-speed, multi-lane roads, we're going to try to get those first. Then [we will] look at some of the secondary roads, see the kind of condition the paint's in."
Carrillo said UDOT has enough paint to last through the spring. It also has other materials, including a heavy-duty adhesive tape that can be put down in place of striping. He said it's slightly more expensive and doesn't last as long as paint, but it's an acceptable substitute.
They will also embed the color in the pavement where possible to stretch supplies.
Berg explained, "We are just doing what we can to get as much material as we can."
"There may be some roads that don't get painted as quickly as normally we do because of the delay in the arrival of the materials," said Betts. But we'll come up with a way to make sure it's safe for the traveling public."
Industry experts cannot predict what will happen with supplies in the future because there are numerous, complicated factors.
As a motorist, we need to be aware that striping may not be as bright as we usually expect.
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Story compiled with contributions from Marc Giauque and Jed Boal.
