East Ayrshire Council invest on state-of-the-art equipment to boost road safety

PEOPLE will find they are on the right lines throughout East Ayrshire thanks to new specialised equipment.

With winter almost upon us, following the clocks going back and evenings becoming darker earlier, road markings become more important than before.

For the next six months or so, people going to work, school or out shopping will discover that new brighter lines will appear on their regular routes.

As they are so common, white lines may be taken for granted but painting them can be time-consuming and costly ¡ª as well as causing disruption to traffic.

To try and prevent this and help improve road safety, East Ayrshire Council has invested in a portable line marking machine, to be used by the Ayrshire Roads Alliance (ARA) on minor roads and housing estates.

Councillor Tom Cook said: ¡°The new machine will allow ARA to paint small sections of lines quickly and efficient and our team is now tackling replacement lines on a priority basis ¡°Although the process is weather dependent, the machine uses cold paint technology, so it is faster, the paint is more durable, dries quickly and the whole operation is safer for operators, especially with the days drawing in and winter approaching.

¡°White lines are now getting refreshed, repaired or replaced in one go by one team, making the process cheaper and much more flexible ¨C and the savings mean the machine will pay for itself in less than two years.

¡°The additional benefit is that we can quickly make sure road markings are kept clean and visible and that¡¯s an invaluable benefit when driving during the darker hours.

¡°It¡¯s a practical, common sense solution to an impractical, but very common problem.¡±

The white line machine cost ¡ê40,000 and trained ARA operators are now hard at work on the roads, repairing markings and improving safety throughout Cumnock and Doon Valley.