Nationwide Paint Shortage Threatens Projects to Stripe State, Local Road Lanes, Crosswalks

This story appears in the June 7 print edition of Transport Topics.

Paint manufacturers and suppliers are notifying contractors and transportation officials around the country that market forces and a scarcity of raw materials are causing shortages of white and yellow road paint used to mark highway lanes.

With several states reporting record spending on road construction, painting a white line down the center of a street could be a challenge this summer.

The paint crunch already has forced Texas to suspend the repainting of stripes on existing roads and Vermont to delay painting crosswalks and lane boundaries, although the state will continue to stripe state highways, The Associated Press reported.

In Pennsylvania, the state Department of Transportation is considering painting narrower lines and shallower layers should the shortage become severe.

“These are just some contingencies,” said PennDOT spokesman Richard Kirkpatrick. “At this point we haven’t had any significant problems but, if in fact the paint shortages continue,” he said, “we’re trying to make some plans on how to deal with it.”

The state also may take over some road-striping projects from contractors if the contractors are unable to find paint, Kirkpatrick said.

PennDOT had to move some of its own paint stockpiles from region to region around the state when some department warehouses ran out, Kirkpatrick added.

Tony Dorsey, spokesman for the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, said the group is “cautiously optimistic” the paint shortage will not become severe, and road projects can be completed on time.

Dorsey said he surveyed about a dozen states and found that transportation officials were aware of possible shortages but did not report any significant effects so far.

In Ohio, the state Department of Transportation believes that it has enough paint to complete its road projects, ODOT spokesman Scott Varner said.

He added, however, that where the shortage might have an effect, “and who we have advised, are local communities — those folks who are not as frequent a customer of these [paint] companies.”

ODOT is telling county and municipal governments to advise their contractors to buy paint early in a road project rather than doing it later in the process, as they usually do, Varner said.

“This isn’t the kind of paint you can just go to Lowe’s and buy. It’s a very specialized product,” Varner said. Road paint must be both water resistant and traffic resistant, he added.

Kirkpatrick at PennDOT said the state’s biggest supplier, Ennis Traffic Safety Solutions, Dallas, outlined the paint shortage situation in an April letter to the department and other customers.

In a summary of  the letter, Kirkpatrick said the paint problem is twofold: The demand for road paint in Asia has escalated in recent years, and the chemicals necessary for producing the paint have become harder to get.

For example, Kirkpatrick said, the Ennis letter noted that the rosin esters that are the basis of the resin system for some road paints are grown in large quantities in China, where a poor crop has caused a shortage.

For road construction and striping contractors, the paint issue could complicate the terms of their contracts.

“One of our competitors said that they couldn’t show up on the job site because they had a lack of [paint],” said a Colorado contractor, Matt Geerdes, vice president of Kolbe Striping Inc., Castle Rock.

“I think we’re well-situated, but unfortunately, I think it’s just starting for a lot of people,” Geerdes said.