After months of winter driving and drivers having to guess where the lanes are, crews are busy with the City's biggest annual art project. 

Wes Delaney is the Superintendent of Traffic Services for the City of Winnipeg. He says that the late spring (or long winter) caused a delay in street cleaning, but now as that is wrapping up "it's time to put the icing on the cake so to speak."

That icing is most often white, but sometimes yellow.

55,000 litres of white paint and 17,000 litres of yellow paint is used to show the divide of lanes throughout Winnipeg each summer, Delaney says.

It's not just lines between lanes that need work. "All the intersections as well have to be painted, and crosswalks and school crossings," he says.

The lines actually get two coats, as well. The first coat is being applied now. The first round of painting takes the crew until about July to finish. "After that, we'll do the second coat up until freeze up just before the winter hits, so we'll have some decent bright lines. Especially when the daylight is getting less and less towards the fall time. You want to have those bright lines at night."

Those bright lines aren't just because of the paint, Delaney says. The city mixes special glass beads with the paint. 

"A lot of people think that it's just paint that goes down, but there's actually round little spheres of glass that go down to reflect your light back at you." Those beads hadn't always been used, and Delaney says without them it's simply a faded line on the roadway at night.

It's a project that will start all over again next spring, and the spring after that.