On a recent Saturday, Alex Garza painted about 120,000 feet of white edge line on freeway exit ramps in Lansing and Brighton, Michigan, between 4 p.m. and 4 a.m.
”To get 400,000 feet in a day is pretty good,” said Garza, 55, who has worked for PK Contracting, the state’s largest pavement marking contractor, since he was 22.
Road marking or sidewalk marking is an important but rarely considered trade in the construction industry that helps us get from point A to point B safely.
Transportation historians generally credit the invention of the white center line in 1911 to Edward Hines, one of the first highway commissioners in the Detroit area.
It is said that his epiphany came after he saw a milk truck leaving a trail of white liquid behind it.
In Michigan, stripe-cutting season begins in May. By the end of October, if all goes according to plan, PK crews will have completed about 50,000 miles of striping. If laid end-to-end, those lines would cross the United States 16 times.
And that doesn’t even take into account the tens of thousands of “bike lane markers” (the official term for road markings), crosswalks, arrows, and the accompanying extended “drive only” signs that tell drivers where they can and cannot ride.
Sam Kischuk, 23, a line crew foreman and painter, said at the start of each shift, an area is identified that will be painted or repainted.
For Kischuk, combination arrows are her favorite. To create a combination arrow, she carefully laid out several templates on the ground and sprayed them with paint.
In comparison, shading is “no fun.” That’s because every time a line is painted that forms a white V, the crew has to move the truck that can spray paint behind it.
The crosswalk is in the middle. Kischuk noted that crosswalks are easy to make straight, but they can be difficult to measure if the road is wide, since construction crews can only close a few lanes at a time.
The artists tend to paint in a straightforward manner. They like the feeling of freshness. They tried to ignore the impatient drivers who shouted, honked, and sometimes threw objects at them.
”Nobody notices a straight line, but if you draw a curve, everyone notices it,” said Ed DiVirgilio, PK’s director of equipment.
Different roads have different needs, so painters use different methods of applying lines to avoid confusion.
Building curbs on busy highways requires extreme speed, so painters have started using a material that dries in seconds. Thermoplastics are initially powders. A melting machine, transported with the spray gun, melts the paint at 400 degrees.
Detroit’s crosswalks must withstand the impact of thousands of tires. Quick-drying thermoplastic paint wouldn’t stand up to the impact, so crews chose a more durable paint, even though it could take three minutes to dry.
Some roads require templates. Some roads require thick tape weighed down with 100-pound weights. Calculations include traffic patterns, soil texture, costs, and weather conditions.
Around 3 a.m., it’s easy to get distracted by the white edge line. But don’t get carried away, says Garza, because you may need to adjust the pressure to keep the overheated paint from spreading too thickly. Or, if the temperature drops, you’ll need to readjust the pressure to maintain the perfect flow.
When Garza presses the black button to spray white paint onto the road, a second gun located behind the paint gun is simultaneously triggered, spraying tiny glass beads the size of salt.
Post time: Mar-17-2025