Bellevue Painted One Side of Four Intersections. The Plain Sides Are Part of the Experiment.

"Did drivers, for example, slow down, since they were able to see the crosswalks better? For pedestrians, did they feel safer because it's brighter and easier to see?"

Jennifer Cook, a spokesperson for the City of Bellevue, asked those questions when The Seattle Times covered the four artist-designed crosswalks finished this summer. The city doesn't have answers yet, and the project was set up so the answers would come later. At each of the four intersections, only one crossing got the artwork. The city left the other crossings plain on purpose so it could compare them.

So the artwork is only half of the project. The gray crossings beside it are the other half, and anyone who uses these corners is already part of the comparison.

Four Intersections, One Painted Crossing at Each

The city calls the pilot Creative Crosswalks. Its Transportation and Community Development departments run it together. The city's public art listing says which crossing was painted at each intersection, and that detail matters when you go looking.

The downtown crossing is the one most people will pass. The Downtown Bellevue Network places it just north of the core on the NE 10th Street corridor. That street carries steady foot and car traffic between downtown towers, apartment and condo buildings, and the I-405 interchange. The other three crossings are spread east along NE 8th, into BelRed, and up to NE 24th, so the pilot reaches well beyond downtown.

Why the Other Crossings Stayed Plain

A crosswalk painted at random tells a city very little. Collisions can drop in a year because traffic changed, a signal was retimed, or a new building opened nearby. Comparing a painted crossing with a plain one at the same intersection rules most of that out, because both share the same drivers, signals, weather and construction. The city's project page describes this setup directly. One crosswalk at each location has a design, and the others stay plain as controls for the evaluation. The public art listing adds that the crossings will be studied before and after the artwork went in.

That's why the city is careful about what it claims. According to The Seattle Times, Bellevue's website calls the designs "purely aesthetic" for now. The city will evaluate their effects into 2027 and hopes the results will shape how transportation experts think about asphalt art. The project timeline lists 2026 to 2027 as the period for comparing the painted crossings with the plain ones and analyzing the results.

The city wants three answers: whether the painted crosswalks improve safety, whether they are easy to maintain, and whether the community likes them. On safety, the city is checking whether the designs make drivers pay more attention and make pedestrians easier to see, or whether they distract instead. The city is treating that last possibility as a real question to answer.

What Other Cities' Results Suggest, and What They Don't

Bellevue has outside evidence to start from. A 2022 study of 17 U.S. sites with asphalt art, cited by The Seattle Times, found a 50% drop in the rate of crashes involving pedestrians, cyclists and other vulnerable road users after the art went in. Total crash rates at those sites fell 17%. Those figures describe other cities' streets, and Bellevue's own results won't come until the 2026 to 2027 evaluation is done.

Before starting, Bellevue talked with cities that already had similar projects, including Seattle, Denver and Olympia. Seattle has had artistic crosswalks for more than a decade. Capitol Hill's rainbow crosswalks went in in 2015. The Seattle Times describes Seattle's painted crosswalks as expressions of each neighborhood's character. Bellevue's version was designed as a measured test from the start, which is why the controls exist.

It is also one of several tests underway. The Seattle Times lists other federally funded safety measures Bellevue planned to try: protected turn phases for pedestrians, adaptive pedestrian signal controls, and cellular vehicle-to-everything technologies. The crosswalk art is the only one of these that everyone can see.

Two Artists, Six Colors, and Squares of Thermoplastic

The work went in faster than the planning did. Artists were selected in April and May 2025. Community outreach and design development followed that summer, the designs were done in October 2025, and installation finished in summer 2026. The public art listing puts the installation in July and August 2026.

The city opened a call for artists, and each artist could use up to six colors. Two Puget Sound artists were chosen, and each designed two crossings:

• Nikita Ares is a Seattle abstract painter and muralist. She immigrated from the Philippines at 17 and earned a fine art degree from Cornish College of the Arts in 2018. She told The Seattle Times this was her first time working with asphalt. Her designs drew on ideas from local children, on nature, and on where she grew up. "Most of my art is really inspired by where I grew up — a lot of sun, a lot of energy, a lot of nature," she said. She also wanted the designs to reflect Pacific Northwest nature.
• Kenji Stoll is a Tacoma artist with a background in design, graffiti, murals and community public art. His work layers patterns, natural imagery and motifs drawn from his Japanese American heritage and Japanese art. The Japanese Cultural & Community Center of Washington lists him as Kenji Hamai-Stoll, a visual and tattoo artist focused on public art and large murals.

Both works are listed as "Untitled," and the city's public art listing doesn't say which artist designed which intersection. The Seattle Times describes the four as floral and geometric patterns.

The method explains the maintenance question. The designs were printed on 12-by-12-inch squares of thermoplastic, laid out on the road, and melted onto the pavement. Cook put the cost at about $250,000. The money came from a U.S. Department of Transportation Safe Streets and Roads for All grant and the city's Arts and Culture program. If the squares wear unevenly under winter traffic, maintenance cost could matter more to the city's decision than how the crossings look.

The Survey Window Closes November 30

The city is asking people who have walked, rolled or driven through these intersections for their views. Its five-minute survey is open until November 30, 2026, about two months from now. The survey is linked from the project page and the city's news release, and KOMO also covered the pilot and the survey on September 26.

Because the plain crossings are the comparison, the most useful feedback comes from using both. For anyone already passing one of these corners, here is a simple order:

1. Cross the painted leg first. That's the north crossing at 106th and NE 10th, the east crossing at 124th and NE 8th, and the south crossing at both 132nd and Bel-Red and 164th and NE 24th.
2. Cross a plain leg at the same intersection, on foot or by car, ideally at a similar time of day.
3. If you drive through, notice where your eyes go at the painted crossing compared with the plain one, since attention versus distraction is exactly what the city is studying.
4. Take the five-minute survey before November 30 while the comparison is fresh.

The downtown crossing is the easiest to fit into a regular routine, since it's two blocks south of the Eastrail segment and Ashwood Park along NE 12th Street. The 124th and NE 8th crossing is a short walk east of Wilburton Station, and BelRed Station sits just south of the 132nd and Bel-Red crossing. The city plans to evaluate these four corners into 2027 and hopes its findings will shape how transportation experts think about asphalt art.

Small changes like these shape how a neighborhood feels on an ordinary walk, and I enjoy keeping track of them with the people I work with. If you're curious how projects like this pilot fit into daily life around Wilburton, BelRed or downtown, I'm always happy to talk it through. You can find me at windermere.com. Let's Connect.