White Rock Pier crosswalk

When the rebuilt White Rock Pier re-opened on the Labour Day weekend, it came with a new TrafficPatternsXD decorative crosswalk at the waterfront: brick pattern, sea air, and thousands of visitors a day.

When White Rock reopened the rebuilt pier over the Labour Day long weekend, the approach came with a new TrafficPatternsXD crosswalk. The pier is among the most heavily used waterfront promenades on the Lower Mainland; on a summer weekend, families, cyclists and dog walkers converge on the same narrow coastal approach. The crossing here has to work as a traffic-safety element first and a piece of the streetscape second.

Square One recommended the XD line over standard TrafficPatterns for this site because of the concentrated pedestrian loads on summer weekends and the salt spray and sun of a foreshore location. TrafficPatternsXD is an aggregate-reinforced preformed thermoplastic; the manufacturer publishes it at 150 mil, heated and stamped into prepared asphalt, with new anti-skid elements exposed as it wears. The install is a direct torch-and-fuse process: heat the substrate, position the pre-cut sheets, torch through, and the crossing is ready for foot and vehicle traffic within a few hours of cooling.

The photographs show a brick pattern in red-brown between white borders, running from the road to the bollards and the Memorial Park sign, with the pier, the beach and the water beyond. A municipality specifying crossings as part of a waterfront or high-pedestrian civic upgrade should ask which grade of thermoplastic the site's loads call for, and for the crossing to be on the renovation drawings rather than added afterwards.

Read the full story: White Rock Pier crosswalk: TrafficPatternsXD at the waterfront