Street art a safety concern, expert

Curiosity got the better of Ross Guffei as he drove past the city’s new brightly coloured medians earlier this week.

Slowing down to catch a better glimpse of the pink and purple design on downtown St. Albert Trail, Guffei nearly found himself bumper to bumper with the vehicle ahead of him.

After narrowly avoiding a fender-bender or a multi-car pile up – the drivers in front of him all reacted similarly – the former urban planner is questioning why the city decided to adorn its main arterial in such a fashion, calling it illogical.

“They’re adding elements to St. Albert Trail which are distracting drivers,” Guffei said. “The purpose of St. Albert Trail is to facilitate the movement of traffic and to get them where they are going, not to slow them down and look at things on the ground.”

The beautification is part of the same $53,000 corporate branding project that saw the crosswalk directly facing St. Albert Place transformed into a mural of sorts.

Both vibrant art displays have prompted safety concerns from residents, who question whether they will distract or alert drivers.

Rob Shields, director of the City-Regions Studies Centre at the University of Alberta, agrees the colourful crosswalk design will be distracting, but in a good way.

With so many billboards, advertisements and roadside activity constantly competing for drivers’ attention, it’s easy for eyes often shift away from the road. At least this “distraction” pulls the gaze back towards the roadway.

“People don’t deliberately hit pedestrians,” Shields said. “It really represents distraction, and sometimes loss of control, so mindfulness and things that bring attention back to the road and back to how pedestrians are relating to cars is key. Once people are aware, they can try to stop and slow down.”

Dean Schick, transportation manager for St. Albert, said a lot of cities are going down this road – incorporating more art into their arteries, but acknowledged that the current design does not meet city’s minimum requirements for crosswalks.

Traditional parallel white lines will border the painting in a few weeks time and the city will evaluate the effect of the median paintings through its collision tracking data.

Shields said that the city should be commended for trying something new and for shifting its focus on the pedestrian experience, which has “been left out through a whole century of cars.”

“The feedback that we get in our research is that residents in this area want their municipalities to innovate and they want to think about Edmonton and St. Albert as places that are supportive of a kind of risk taking,” he said. “The negative side is that no one wants to be the guinea pig.”

While Shields points out that in an ideal world St. Anne Street would be transformed into a drop-off area and not a major thoroughfare – a civic plaza is included in the 25-year Downtown Area Revitalization Plan – Guffei believes the city doesn’t think enough about drivers.

He said creating a safe pedestrian environment includes effectively moving vehicles throughout the municipality and suggests that the city’s road rage and speeding problems could be associated with poor traffic light timing.

“It appears that in St. Albert (the city) has completely forgotten about the driver, said Guffei. “They don’t care that they are creating a situation that they are frustrated and start to speed to make green lights.”