U.S. Department of Transportation
Federal Highway Administration
1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
Washington, DC 20590
202-366-4000
At this time, there are no federally required minimum levels of retroreflectivity for pavement markings. On April 22, 2010, a standard for maintaining minimum retroreflectivity of longitudinal pavement markings was published as a notice of proposed rulemaking in the federal register. A Supplemental Notice of Proposed Amendment (SNPA) proposes a revised set of standards to be incorporated in the MUTCD. The documents listed below are final drafts. The official version was published in the Federal Register on January 4, 2017, and may be viewed along with all the official supplemental documents at www.regulations.gov. Search for FHWA-2009-0139.
MUTCD Supplemental Notice of Proposed Amendment (SNPA) – Federal Register Notice [HTML, PDF ]
This document, developed as part of the rulemaking process, provides the background and detail explaining the proposal.
SNPA Proposed MUTCD Language [HTML, PDF ]
This link shows the proposed pavement marking retroreflectivity MUTCD text.
Methods for Maintaining Pavement Marking Retroreflectivity – Draft Report for the SNPA [HTML, PDF ]
This report is referenced as guidance in the SNPA MUTCD Language. It provides detailed information on methods that may be used to comply with the proposed standard.
Revised Assessment of Economic Impacts related to the SNPA [HTML, PDF ]
This report explains the analysis that was performed to estimate costs and potential benefits associated with SNPA.
For background on what was proposed in 2010:
For hard copies of documents with publication numbers, please send a request to report.center@dot.gov and include the publication number and title, along with the number of copies and your mailing address and phone number. Requests will be filled based on availability.