Horizontal Mural as Traffic Calming

Today is 18th Hamilton Street Festival. More exciting news than that, the Hamilton horizontal mural being completed by some organizations and collectives in the area. Whitney Frazier, of the Hamilton Arts Collective, is helping to create the first horizontal mural for the area. Below is a sneak peak sidewalk sketch of the mural before it was begun.
Murals are a wonderful opportunity to bring communities together; to express creativity and brighten the neighborhood; and also, as can be seen with this project, a traffic calming technique! Traffic calming is what cities use to slow the traffic through neighborhoods and other areas. Ideally, traffic would never get so fast to begin with, if only roads were narrow and followed the contour of the Earth, if parked cars lined the street and if trees were added to the planting strips, but that's not the case. Instead, traffic engineers add speed bumps and speed cushions, bump outs, colored and textured pavers, raised intersections, curb extensions, chicanes, diverters, speed cameras, etc. This list seems to grow everyday, with new solutions created every day.
These solutions, however, only slightly alleviate the problem, and do not address the root of the concern. If our roads were designed for people and not for the car (i.e. wide and straight), we wouldn't need these traffic calming elements in the first place.

Regardless, solutions like this, the Hamilton horizontal mural, are the ones I enjoy seeing. Neighbors comes together to create a beautiful piece of art that the community can be proud of.

The mural is at the intersection of Hamilton Avenue and Harford Road in Baltimore, MD.