The Power of Paint in Street Transformation

Forrest Avenue, with the neighborhood park on the left side of the street. (Source: Strong Towns/Edward Erfurt.)

I live across the street from our local park, which is in the early planning phase for several capital improvements, including an upgrade to the municipal pool. The excitement of new civic amenities is quickly overshadowed by parking, as a typical starting point with these types of community plans is the question of where everyone will park. This self-imposed hurdle is now commonplace as the initial benchmark whether a civic project will move forward or if it will be successful when completed. 

And it’s the wrong question to be asking, because a car-first approach prioritizes the wrong user for this civic investment. Planning for cars is a self-fulfilling prophecy that results in more cars. Parks are for people and not cars, and therefore the questions throughout the planning phase need to focus on the ultimate users of the space, which are people. For instance, a better question to ask is: Who are the users of the park, and how will they access it? If the premier amenity in the park is a jogging or fitness trail, it is highly probable that the users will walk or jog to the park if walking is provided as an option. If the scale and character of the park is of neighborhood scale, it is highly probable that the users will be local residents, who will leave their cars in the comfort of their own garage or driveway. If the majority of the park amenities are for children under the age of 15, then they are too young to drive and will not have cars. 

The access, or how people get to the park, is as important as the amenities within it. Access sets the stage and becomes the threshold or gateway into the park. Access to all civic spaces needs to be safe and positively contribute to the growth of the community’s wealth. When we apply a car-first approach, and build car accommodations for the maximum imaginable demand, say during a single event or tournament (comparable to shopping centers overbuilding parking in the belief that they’ll need it on Black Friday), it results in places that negatively contribute to the growth and value of the surrounding community. The design of adjacent streets and providing connections for all users sets the stage as to how a community civic space is ultimately utilized. 

The street right-of-way on the perimeter of a civic space is one of the greatest resources in the city that’s generally overlooked in park planning. When a street is merely envisioned as a place to move cars, that street becomes a detractor and barrier to the park, because planners default to constructing buffers along the street’s edges. This restricts access to the park, transforming a threshold into a fence. Streets adjacent to civic spaces can instead be a platform that can be maximized to add value, not only to the civic space, but also to the adjacent uses. In this particular case, the street can enhance the city’s civic space by providing a gateway that is a threshold, welcoming people into the park, and by providing utilitarian uses for things such as increased parking capacity. This balanced approach elevates the civic uses of the park, while managing the demands of one-off events. 

A real-life example from my own city illustrates not only how these principles can inform better park design that elevates the civic realm, but also how we can apply these principles through small, inexpensive, tactical changes that yield immediate results.

The First Experiment

My wife worked with our city to have a crosswalk striped, connecting our street to the park. This took a lot of persistence and patience to navigate the various processes and procedures within the city to implement. The city streets department striped the crosswalk, which resulted in almost immediate changes with driver behavior along the street. After nearly a year of this crosswalk being striped, the road was repaved, which erased all the pavement markings. The success of the crosswalk could be noted by two actions. First, once the crosswalk disappeared, several residents submitted online requests to confirm the crosswalk would be replaced. Secondly, the crosswalk was the very first item striped on the street.

I began thinking how the success of striping a simple crosswalk could inspire more improvements to this street that would enhance the access of and entry into the park. At the time of this article, the street is a blank slate with no striping or paint, which is all the permission I need to explore how the street could be made better with the simple application of paint.    

Forrest Avenue with the centerline shifted. (Source: Strong Towns/Edward Erfurt.)

Enhancement Through Paint

Forest Avenue is currently a two-lane street with an abundance of asphalt that operates as an ambiguous parking lane. The lane on the right of the image is over 13 feet wide and the lane on the left is over 24 feet wide. Over the years of repaving, this street has become wider and, as a result, the speeds have increased on this local street. When events occur at the park, the excessive asphalt is transformed into ambiguous on-street parking. This parking quickly becomes a showcase of every method of parking imaginable; parallel, head-in angled, on-road, off-road, and all of the above reversed. These are problems that distract from the benefit and beauty of the park, creating confusion for first-time visitors, and making the street more dangerous for all users. These problems provide an opportunity to illustrate how to improve this street with the simple application of paint.  

Right-Size the Travel Lanes

The current traffic lanes are over 13 feet wide, which is almost double the width of the standard car. These are the widths reserved for the interstate highway and are out of place for a low-volume, low-speed street adjacent to a park. The travel lanes could be right-sized or narrowed between nine to 10 feet wide in each direction, for a total of 18–20 feet. These widths are consistent with the character of residential streets and match the lane widths of the other streets in the neighborhood. 

The narrower lanes increase the driver’s awareness of the place in which they are driving. This location is in the middle of a highly walkable residential neighborhood and adjacent to a park filled with children and families, where pedestrians should be expected. Narrowing the travel lanes is safer for all users due to the slower resulting speeds and shorter pedestrian distances to cross the street. By right-sizing the lanes for the character of the community, over 17 feet of asphalt becomes unnecessary for the movement of cars.

Conversion of Excess

The extra 17 feet of remaining asphalt highlights the excess literally built into our community streets. In addition to resulting wider lanes, the excessive asphalt results in additional costs to repave, additional costs to maintain, and the additional cost to provide exponentially more stormwater management systems. To put this into perspective, the additional asphalt on this street is equivalent in material and cost to an additional street. 

This excess is an existing condition, which provides an opportunity where the excess pavement does not have to go to waste. The remaining paved area should be transformed into a productive use that can participate in a complementary role for both the street and the park. This remaining area could be easily transformed into designated and defined on-street parking with the simple application of paint. Paint is a simple, low-cost tool that can be applied with just a tape measure and a four-inch paint roller.

This neighborhood street can be transformed from an ambiguous, undefined edge of a park, into a slow-speed neighborhood street for a couple hundred dollars and an afternoon of the street department’s time. There are two different parking solutions that can result by simply shifting the centerline of the street four feet either to the left or to the right, as shown in the below image. 

Forrest Avenue with parallel parking. (Source: Strong Towns/Edward Erfurt.)

Option 1: Parallel Parking

If the centerline of the street is shifted four feet to the left, two parallel parking lanes can be added to either side of the street. The parallel parking creates a buffer between the travel lane and the park. It also provides a parking option that can be accessed by both directions of traffic. Parallel parking is very orderly and easily understood by users.  

Forrest Avenue with angled parking. (Source: Strong Towns/Edward Erfurt.)

Option 2: Angled Parking

If the centerline of the street is shifted four feet to the right, head-out angled parking could be located adjacent to the park. The angled parking provides a greater amount of parking than parallel parking, and is most similar to current parking practices on the street. This option does not change the current condition on the left side of the street, reserving the potential for improvements in the future.

Of all the angled parking, I prefer the head-out angled parking, because it situates the cars’ trunks toward the park, and provides drivers a clear view of the street when pulling out. 

These proposals are not radical, do not require significant monetary investment, and can be completed with the resources already available in the city. This is the type of transformation that can be completed in an afternoon with a tape measure, paint roller, and a few hundred dollars of road paint. The return on investment as the result of this transformation is exponential. The success can be measured through lower speeds, number of parking spaces, and, most importantly, safer streets that all residents can enjoy. 

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