Residents of one Los Angeles neighborhood are hosting street “painting parties” to make the area’s crosswalks safer for pedestrians without the delays of going through the city.
Jonathan Hale, a Sawtelle resident who helped organize some of the parties, told KTLA’s Erin Myers on Wednesday that he wanted to protect pedestrians, especially children playing at Stoner Park.
“It’s one thing to have things like stop signs and signs to tell cars to watch out for pedestrians,” Hale said. “But it’s another thing to actually have the infrastructure in place that alerts cars that there are people crossing.”
Community members participated in the parties every Saturday for four weeks starting on May 24 by bringing traffic-grade paint and stencils to give the crosswalks around Stoner Park a makeover.
With the community concerned about motorists driving too fast through the area, Hale decided not to go through the city after discovering how long the process could take.
“I have to ask the city this and this, and there’s an approval process, and you have to do the budgeting, and then get a list of subcontractors, and then you have to get approval, and there’s the committee… Whatever you know, I just don’t want to deal with all that, so I just decided to do it myself,” Hale said.
Los Angeles does have the MyLA311 website to submit requests such as this. KTLA has reached out to the city for comment.
Hale admitted that similar actions to paint crosswalks in other cities have sometimes been removed, but says he may repaint if it happens in Sawtelle.
