Department of Transportation

Did you find Taipei City’s traffic markings to be different recently? Do the crosswalks and lane stripes look different on rainy nights?
The light reflection effect of conventional traffic markings often decreases on rainy nights, which leads to difficulty in recognizing the markings, and results in more risks in regard to traffic safety. As such, Taipei City Traffic Engineering Office has long devoted its efforts to making improvement. Originally, they embedded tempered glass (commonly called the “cat eye”) on the roadway to reflect the road markings as a marking assistive facility in attempting to enhance road users’ marking recognition. Nevertheless, this kind of facility sticks out on the roadway, which may pose potential danger to slower vehicles, such as motorcycles and bicycles.
In order to concurrently overcome the issues of traffic marking recognition and traffic safety, the Offices took the lead to try the “shaped markings” to substitute for the tempered glass roadway light reflection markings. It is hoped that, with the better effect on light reflection on raining nights, plus their shape being similar to the height of the conventional traffic markings, the shaped markings will counter the disadvantages (of sticking out on the roadway) of tempered glass roadway light reflection markings. Currently, the “shaped markings” have been installed at the lane stripes, separated traffic lines and crosswalks along Songshou Road (Fig. 1), Yixian Road (Fig. 2), Sec. 2 of Keelung Road (Fig. 3), Songgao Road and Huanhe Riverside Expressway (Yanping Temple). Their light reflection effect will be observed, and the results will be used as the reference for future promotion and adoption.

2014-06-10