You are correct. Sometimes the plows do hit the reflectors and ours extend above the surface, not below like WSDOT is able to do. The reflectors will be replaced during the annual road striping process. Thank you for your comment. Operations and Maintenance.

If you're hitting these at least once a year (Ive picked up these broken pieces on two separate occasions this winter), and they are flying off into the sides of the roads and the ditches, then you are putting a whole lot of small plastic pieces into our environment. Is there any way that the city can install a recessed reflector? Or how about the reflectors that are flexible tabs? Its a major bummer to consider that we're polluting our watersheds with pounds of plastic every year from this practice. Thanks.

Comments will be forwarded to Operations & Maintenance

The blue reflector in the picture marks fire hydrants and are maintained by the Bainbridge Island Fire Department. I do understand that the snow plows can also remove the yellow raised pavement markers (RPMs) that the City maintains. This is something that the City has looked at over the last couple of years to come up with a solution. Unfortunately many of the our roads have a shallow road base that does not allow the RPMs to be recessed into the pavement. On roads that are rebuilt with a deeper base (example Fort Ward Hill) we try to recess the RPMs to prevent damage from the snow plow. We have looked into a snow plowable RPM that has a steel cage around it but this is very expensive. In 2014 we decided to try and limit the amount of RPMs installed on our roads to hills and curves. RPMs that supplement painted center line and edge line are optional pursuant to the Manual for Uniform Traffic Control. In 2014 we substantially reduced the number of RPMs installed on our roads while we look for a better solution that will protect them from snow plow removal.

Thank you for the additional information!