Ottawa sidewalks covered in orange to mark trip hazards
You might be coloured confused by the amount of orange paint decorating Ottawa's sidewalks, but the man in charge of roads and sidewalks says that's due to stricter provincial rules on crack repairs.
Workers are using orange spray paint to mark cracks on city sidewalks that have been deemed "trip hazards," according to Luc Gagné, the city's manager of roads services,
The Ontario Ministry of Transportation recently lowered the height of a trip hazard that must be repaired from three to two centimetres.
Gagné said that change has resulted in more crack repairs this year than in previous years. It's also translated into a lot more orange paint around the nation's capital.
"It's definitely a big change of process," Gagné said. "[It's] something that we did with barrels and pylons in years past, and maybe a little bit of paint here and there."
Cracks must be marked by the fluorescent orange paint within 10 days, but actual full repairs don't happen for a few months.
The total cost of increased repairs is not yet known, according to the city.
