Crosswalk art

Last autumn, I was pretty surprised when the new crosswalks went in at 45th and Wallingford, after the repaving of 45th was completed. The reason I was surprised is that the three crosswalks looked like this:

Was this some kind of new ultra-visible safety crosswalk? Or was it purely decorative?

Perhaps you have asked yourself these same questions. Well, I decided to find the answers.

It turns out that these crosswalks are made with a new product called Duratherm by a company named Streetprint. According to their website, the crosswalks are made with "inlaid thermoplastic" that can be applied in different patterns and colors. Cities across North America have been installing the decorative crosswalks. You can see in this photo gallery that most of the patterns around the country seem to be brick-inspired.

Actually, Wallingford's new crosswalks are not the first Duratherm crosswalks in the city. In August 2007, the West Seattle Herald unveiled the design for a new crosswalk at the intersection of California Avenue and Southwest Lander Street in West Seattle.

The very cool and informative Smarter Neighbors blog, which deals with Seattle land use issues in our neighborhoods, has also blogged on these crosswalks.

So are they safer? Not necessarily. The Seattle Department of Transportation explicitly states here that "textured and colored concrete is an aesthetic treatment, not a safety improvement".

I suspect we'll be seeing more of these crosswalks around the city as time goes by.