It's hard to imagine what people are thinking sometimes. Dig -- as the great Prince once urged -- if you will the picture:

It's about 7:20 on a weekday morning on a busy road that feeds straight into Downtown -- let's call it Lisbon Avenue -- and note that at about 58th Street, another busy route -- let's call that Appleton Avenue/Highway 41 -- feeds into this so-called Lisbon Avenue.

As you might expect, this street is quite busy, especially at nodes like North Avenue, where there is an entrance to the 41 spur and Lisbon briefly narrows to a single lange, and at 35th Street. Along the way are crossing guards and a caravan of school buses attempting to make left turns onto busy Lisbon Avenue.

It's always backed up in the morning. It's a fact of life. But this morning, a few blocks west of 35th Street, the traffic seemed worse than ever. Thankfully, a lot of drivers detoured down residential side streets, alleviating the backup a bit.

When one driver -- let's call him me -- finally reached the intersection with 35th Street, he saw the cause of the backup. Sections of the intersection were blocked off with orange cones while city Dept. of Public Works employees painted new crosswalks. Yes, folks, on a busy thoroughfare in the heart of rush hour, these people were snarling already heavy traffic to PAINT CROSSWALKS.

Now, far be it from me to tell people how to do their jobs, but couldn't this be done at 6 a.m. or 9:30 a.m. or 2 p.m. just as easily? The crew could perhaps do less invasive work during rush hours. If they must paint crosswalks during rush hour, are there not some considerably less trafficked streets that could be done at peak times?

Maybe it is necessary, and I welcome any clarification that anyone might have. Please post it via the Talkbacks feature below.

OK, I've ranted and I'm over it. Now don't get me started on why people turning left seem to never turn into the left lane -- as they should -- but into the right lane, preventing right on red turns.