Traverse City is expediting its street marking schedule this year to finish before the crush of the summer tourism and festival season.

Crews with Troy-based PK Contracting started painting downtown parking lines and crosswalks early this week. City officials say the street marking work will be completed across the city by June 30. The city drew public criticism last summer when pavement markings didn’t get completed until late July.

“There’s always been a desire expressed by the residents and the city’s (leadership) to have this done prior to the city’s busiest season,” says Chris Weber, recently promoted to the city’s director of mobility infrastructure. “It makes it bright and fresh when everyone’s here visiting, and it promotes safety for motorists, pedestrians and bicyclists."

Weber says the city traditionally arranged for its street marking work in one-year contracts that provided for two one-year extensions, but it didn’t include a timing schedule for the work. Last year’s contract, also completed by PK Contracting, totaled around $146,000.

But after last summer’s tardy timeframe, the city’s street department staff and city administration looked at ways to speed up the striping schedule. That included investigating bringing the work in-house to the city streets department. Weber says the staff estimated it would cost the city about $700,000 in equipment and additional personnel expenses to bring the work in-house, and close to $400,000 annually once the equipment was purchased.

“We can’t do it with our existing personnel,” Weber says.

Officials then decided to put a in deadline date of June 30 when they put out bid specifications for 2026.

“It’s the first time it’s been required to be done in a specific timeframe,” Weber says.

But time is money, and the accelerated schedule will cost the city more. Weber says this year’s street painting contract came in at around $298,000 – more than twice last year’s total. But officials expected to pay a premium to have the work done by early summer.

“It wasn’t anything that we didn’t anticipate,” Weber says of the increased cost. “I think it will be a good learning process for the contractor and the city.”

Weber says city staff put in significant work in recent months into improving the street striping process. It checked with street departments in several other Michigan cities including Ann Arbor, Holland and Sault Ste Marie about their striping procedures. Several expressed similar scheduling challenges given the few painting contractors in Michigan that do the work.

“It seems like a pretty consistent theme in the state,” Weber says. “There are so few painting companies in the state that can do this scale of work.”

PK Contracting, which has a branch office in Lake City, will be responsible for repainting parking marks, crosswalks and stop bars at intersections, turning lanes and arrows, railroad crossings and related work. Weber says much of that work will be completed during evening and nighttime hours to minimize traffic disruption.

The city has a separate contract with Michigan Pavement Markings based in Byron Center for what Weber calls “long-line” markings in the center of city streets, and street edge markings and bike lanes. That must also be completed by June 30 under the city’s contract, although Weber says that goes much quicker and should be completed by mid-June.

The Grand Traverse County Road Commission is also in the midst of road striping season. Manager Dan Watkins says the county is responsible for striping and painting turn lanes, crosswalks, and school and railroad crossing markers along 263 miles of county primary roads, and additional painting along the county’s local road network that’s done on as-needed basis.

County officials said they spend between $500,000 and $1 million annually for road markings, depending on the amount of work that’s needed.

“We evaluate all of the markings prior to issuing the contract,” says Chris Elliott, assistant manager of the Road Commission’s engineering department. Elliott says the county’s road markings, also done primarily by PK Contracting which also performs pavement marking for the Michigan Department of Transportation, is “well underway” and will be completed this month. Roads scheduled for chip sealing this season will be striped after the resurfacing is complete.

Like city officials, Elliot says the county’s striping schedules are impacted by the limited number of contractors that perform street and road striping, and acknowledged that communities across the state are lined up for the work at the same time.

“The pool of qualified contractors to do the pavement is limited,” Elliot says.

Despite those challenges, Watkins says it’s still more cost-effective to turn the road striping work over to private contractors rather than adding to the agency’s already busy summer work schedule.
“By the time you purchase all that equipment and hire the people to do the work, it just doesn’t make financial sense for us to do that,” Watkins says.