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       Last Saturday, Alex Garza painted about 120,000 feet of white edge line on highway ramps in Lansing and Brighton, Michigan, from 4 p.m. to 4 a.m.
       ”Going up 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.
       Painting lines or marking sidewalks 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 Edward Hines, one of Detroit’s first highway commissioners, with inventing the white center line in 1911.
       It is said that this epiphany was brought about by observing a milk truck leaving a trail of white liquid behind it.
       In Michigan, stripping season begins in May. By the end of October, if all goes according to plan, PC crews will have completed about 50,000 miles of striping. If those lines were laid in a row, they would cross the United States 16 times.
       And that doesn’t take into account the tens of thousands of “bike lane signs” — the official term for sidewalk markings — crosswalks, arrows, and the accompanying extended “pedestrian only” signs that tell drivers where they can and can’t ride.
       ”At the beginning of each shift, they identify an area that needs to be painted or repainted,” said Sam Kischuk, 23, a line crew leader and painter.
       Kischuk’s favorite is the combo arrow. To create a composite arrow, she carefully lays several templates on the ground and spray paints them.
       In contrast, cross-wiring is “no fun.” That’s because every time a line was painted in a white V shape, the crew had to reposition the truck, which would spray paint from behind.
       The crosswalk is in the middle. Kischuk said crosswalks are easy to straighten, but they are difficult to measure if the road is wider because construction crews can only close a few lanes at a time.
       The artists tend to paint directly. They like the feeling of freshness. They tried to ignore the impatient drivers who shouted, honked, and sometimes even threw objects at them.
       ”Nobody’s going to notice a straight line, but if you draw a curved line, everyone will notice,” said Ed DiVirgilio, PK’s equipment manager.
       Different roads have different needs, so artists use different methods of drawing lines to avoid confusion.
       Building curbs on busy highways requires extreme speed, so painters have started using a material that dries in seconds. Thermoplastics start as powders. A melting machine supplied with the spray gun dissolves it at 400 degrees.
       Detroit’s crosswalks must withstand the impact of thousands of tires. The quick-drying thermoplastic paint couldn’t withstand the impact, so even though it could dry in three minutes, line crews opted for a more durable paint.
       Some roads require formwork. Some roads require a thick belt weighted with 100-pound weights. Calculations take into account traffic patterns, soil texture, costs, and weather.
       Around 3 a.m., it’s easy to get distracted by the white edge line. But you can’t get distracted, 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, he also fires a second gun behind the spray gun, spraying tiny glass beads the size of salt.