I've had the same experience. I once noticed that a section of local highway had been restriped so instead of it being just white dashes it had white dashes followed immediately by a brief black dash. This is a fairly light colored concrete highway that runs east-west.
I was curious about this new striping, emailed, and very quickly got an interesting and friendly response about how they are studying this new striping technique because it makes the lines more visible. Being light colored pavement, running east-west (facing sunrise/sunset), and in an area where it rains frequently (which changes the pavement color) this made a ton of sense.
I think that asking a technical question politely was a big help, but the folks who replied seemed more like talking with a fellow engineer who was excited to explain why they are doing what they are doing.
(I've had other similar experiences when asking questions about / suggesting light timing changes, etc.)
I’ve been listening to City Planner Plays on YouTube as he plays City Skylines and he has quite interesting patter about the behind the scenes work for development. Many interesting things come up you might not even realize.
I was just driving through a construcion zone, heading east at about 9:00AM so the sun angle was still pretty low. The lanes had been rerouted several times, and the old markings were ground off but this still left lighter stripes in the concrete where the paint had been. In that lighting it was very difficult to distinguish the currently-painted lanes and the old, now ground-off lane markings. As I made my way through, I found myself wondering how a self-driving car would cope.
I was curious about this new striping, emailed, and very quickly got an interesting and friendly response about how they are studying this new striping technique because it makes the lines more visible. Being light colored pavement, running east-west (facing sunrise/sunset), and in an area where it rains frequently (which changes the pavement color) this made a ton of sense.
I think that asking a technical question politely was a big help, but the folks who replied seemed more like talking with a fellow engineer who was excited to explain why they are doing what they are doing.
(I've had other similar experiences when asking questions about / suggesting light timing changes, etc.)