An overrated artist, or a team of city workers. A single freeway sign can easily cost $75,000. Most government labor workers receive reasonable living wages as well as overtime and other benifits. Any public works project requires insurance, permits, impact and feasibility studies, review hearings, meetings, many of which involve rooms full of well paid director and executive level employees, so all in all there is a significant dollar value associated with beuracracy. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have oversight, or planning and review, that public hearings and the like shouldn’t be held, or that workers shouldn’t be well paid. I’m saying that the government can’t just go buy some paint at Home Depot and slap rainbows on whatever they want without making sure that people are ok with it, it won’t have a negative impact on the economy or environment, and other factors are all considered and cared for.
It's not 1 crosswalk, there's 4 crosswalks. They're supposed to be permanent, expected to last 10 years before repairs are needed. They also had to lay down thermal plastic tiles which probably contributed more to the cost than the paint did. That's still a lot of money to spend on crosswalks, but they're meant to serve as a memorial of the Pulse Nighclub shooting
Thermoplastic tiles will probably cost you 5 bucks a square meter or so. Minimum width for a crosswalk is 6 foot and the road is probably around 6 yards across giving around 10 square meters per crosswalk. That's only 200 bucks for thermoplastic tiles per crosswalk. Seeing as your using multiple colors or paint you'd need 7 gallons of paint of which high grade costs anywhere from 40-70 bucks a gallon. The 200 bucks for the tiles plus the say 400 for paint still only comes out to 800 bucks for materials not accounting for high grade adhesive ( would come out to no more than 500 bucks) still doesn't give us more than 2k of the cost meaning they paid almost 200k in labor for what's maybe 2 days work
Lol I was just reading up on the costs of everything, so thanks for sparing me that.
I just read that the price includes 1 year of upkeep and maintenance from contractors, and those guys can be pretty expensive.
I'm not trying to argue, so please politely correct me if I'm wrong but...$200 for tiles per crosswalk comes to $800, not $200. And they used 6 colors, so if they need 7 gallons of each color for 4 crosswalks that's 168 gallons of paint...at $40-$70 that comes to $6,770-$11,760. So paint and tiles come to around $7,570-$12,560 total(more with the cost of adhesive).....Im freaking awful with math, did I do that right? Lol
The average salary in public works is $16~ an hour. Factor that in, with at least 2 workers per site. Factor job hours, plus padding for delays or complications, the fact they can only work at certain windows of time, and add 1-2 hours per session of work for set up and transport. Then add the costs of public forums on the issue, planning meetings, environmental and other impact and feasibility studies, permits, preparation of the substrate and related measures, so forth and so on. It all adds up really quick. A project like this could involve hundreds of paid employees and many thousands of hours of billable labor time for everyone from assistants, attorneys, politicians, public works employees, procurement personnel, secretaries, drafters, notaries, specialists, blah blah. There are issues of liability and responsibility that governments and companies often face that individuals don’t. One person can act faster and cheaper than a comity.
16 is average, but a lot of them make closer to $35/hr. My husband has worked for road construction, contractors, all that and almost every guy on his teams were making no less than 25....it's a great line of work to be in haha
The City of Atlanta throws away money like a drunken sailor on shore leave. Millions on streetcars that don't work, awnings at the airport instead of better traffic flow, etc. Mayor's chief of staff charging the city for personnel travel. Most corrupt city in the nation.
I just read that the price includes 1 year of upkeep and maintenance from contractors, and those guys can be pretty expensive.
I'm not trying to argue, so please politely correct me if I'm wrong but...$200 for tiles per crosswalk comes to $800, not $200. And they used 6 colors, so if they need 7 gallons of each color for 4 crosswalks that's 168 gallons of paint...at $40-$70 that comes to $6,770-$11,760. So paint and tiles come to around $7,570-$12,560 total(more with the cost of adhesive).....Im freaking awful with math, did I do that right? Lol