Blast off

摘要

In October 2006, the extension of the 1-355 north/south section of the Illinois Tollway was listed by Road & Bridges as No. 1 on its Top 10 Roads list. It was likewise in May 2006 that the Midwest division of NES Rentals took delivery of their first Stripe Hog Waterblasting System. From then until now, the Illinois Tollway and the Stripe Hog have shared a timely and productive relationship. In 2007, the NES Traffic Safety Division was purchased by a private equity firm and renamed RoadSafe Traffic Systems. One of the managers who remained with the company throughout the transition was Mark Long, the Midwest district manager for RoadSafe. In a recent telephone interview with Long, he provided the following insight into the NES/Road-Safe and Stripe Hog experience. The Stripe Hog was not the first time NES had experimented with water blasting for road-marking removal. However, their previous experiences had been less than impressive. Most notably, all of the other systems had not included vacuum recovery and only complicated the work of removal rather then enhance and expedite it. The highway engineers were less then impressed and NES was forced to look at other options.