This artist paints on streets to make them safer places to walk
The collaboration between officials in Hyattsville and Baltimore-based artist Graham Coreil-Allen is part of a growing movement to use art as a tool to promote pedestrian safety, an appealing option for cities looking for quick and affordable responses to a perplexing nationwide increase in fatalities.
“It helps establish this as a place,” said Coreil-Allen, 41, who seeks to turn streets into somewhere people on foot can enjoy rather than being only for cars to pass quickly through.
The number of people on foot killed by drivers in the United States has surged in recent years, with an estimated 7,500 deaths in 2022 — the highest figure in over 40 years. Plastic posts and swatches of color offer less protection than concrete barriers, and without hard data and clear federal guidance, some transportation engineers have been skeptical about turning to art as a safety measure. But the idea got a boost this month in an overhaul of a widely used design manual for streets, with federal transportation officials stating clearly that their guidelines don’t prohibit what they call “aesthetic surface treatments.”
“This is a win for sure,” Coreil-Allen said.
Federal transportation officials are taking a growing role in trying to protect pedestrians and cyclists. Federal highway officials said in a document explaining the design manual changes that they plan to study how street art could help, pointing to a report sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies in 2022 that studied the effect of art installations at 17 locations in cities around the country. The study’s authors concluded that the projects were linked to a 50 percent decline in crashes involving pedestrians.
The update to the design guidelines, known as the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, is part of that effort and includes updated standards for crosswalks and bike infrastructure. When it was released, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the aim was to help cities, counties and states “make it safer to walk, bike, and drive.”
The federal government also has new money to spend on the problem. The infrastructure law provided a $5 billion fund to help local governments design and build safer streets. The most recent round of awards went to 385 projects around the country, including $9.8 million for Mount Rainier, another Prince George’s County city. The project will tackle filling gaps in sidewalks, lowering speed limits and improving intersections.
A full-scale redesign and rebuild of a street with pedestrians and cyclists in mind might take years of planning and a budget in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, but a project like the one in Hyattsville can be finished at a fraction of the cost.
But in the conservative world of traffic engineering, the idea of painting on streets has encountered some resistance. While many cities including the District are experimenting with the idea, the state highway agencies that control the busiest and most dangerous roads have been more hesitant, Coreil-Allen said.
The Maryland Department of Transportation said it would review the new sections on street art in the updated manual in coming weeks.
“The Maryland State Highway Administration strives to ensure a consistent and uniformly marked highway system that conforms to all applicable federal and state guidelines,” the department said in a statement.
Coreil-Allen integrates his work into more established ideas like extending curbs part way into a crosswalk to narrow the space people have to traverse, a technique called a “bump out.” Adding bright areas of color catches drivers’ attention and sends a signal that the street isn’t only somewhere for them to zip through.
“It provides a cue to the motorists to slow down,” Coreil-Allen said. The idea, he said, is to offer an interim solution until a permanent change can be put in place. Coreil-Allen has worked with communities around Baltimore, where he moved to earn a graduate degree at the Maryland Institute College of Art. As a student he installed a DIY crosswalk on a road near the college, posing as a construction worker at night. Then in 2013, the city commissioned an official project.
“It got me excited,” Coreil-Allen said. Within a few years he had launched a company and is now planning on hiring his first full-time employee.
He uses materials common in the road construction industry, working with suppliers able to produce coatings in the bright colors he needs. Stooping over the sidewalk, he can explain in detail about how different materials bind to the surface of a street and the pros and cons of each — a grasp of the technical aspects of his work that he said helps him relate to street maintenance crews.
The Hyattsville project was completed in October, and Taylor Robey, the city’s transportation manager, said so far the response has been positive.
“Asphalt art is exciting because it’s obviously nice to look at, it’s eye-catching, but there’s also been more recent studies showing it improves safety,” Robey said. “It’s a leap of faith sometimes, but in our experience with asphalt art, the community was excited to see something different.”
On a recent morning, Coreil-Allen stopped by to check out how the work was holding up after a few months exposed to traffic. People ambled through the quiet streets, color under their feet.
“You’re immersed in art,” Coreil-Allen said.
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