Street Smart Design + Build — a KC local design firm — is taking asphalt art to dangerous intersections across the city. It's part of an effort to reduce traffic fatalities through a method known as traffic calming.

More than halfof all fatal or injury-causing car collisions occur at or near intersections. KC has seen 15 pedestrian fatalities in 2022 as of August 4, according to KCTV 5.

Street Smart believes that asphalt art can help minimize these dangers.

About the initiative

The Asphalt Art Initiative, funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, is intended to calm and beautify the intersection of two busy, high-speed arterials,.

The big picture? To minimize speeding + create safer conditions for drivers and pedestrians alike.

The initiative completes tasks like extending curbs along corners of intersections to provide blank canvases for artists, creating shorter crossing distances for pedestrians, and adding median islands to the affected areas.

Broadway Boulevard and Main Street

This is not its first rodeo. In 2020, KC received a $25,000 grant from the Asphalt Art Initiative to enhance the intersection between Broadway Boulevard and Main Street in Westport. (You can see it while visiting spots from our neighborhood guide).

Artists painted four areas with a road-style mural in the middle of the intersection. KC sure hearts a mural. cuz it's a heart? lol idk feel free to ignore

The area was also supplemented with new crosswalks, neighborhood branded median islands, and left turn lanes.

12th Street and Benton Boulevard

There have been 24 accidents, including four pedestrian crashes, just in the area of 12th Street & Benton Boulevard alone in the last four years.

Enter: the Asphalt Art Initiative.

Back in July 2022, the Kansas City Artists Coalition sought out artists to paint the intersection for the 12th Street and Benton Boulevard project.

Six different local artists brought their unique local art to the intersection. The project was completed during the first week of August 2022.

Have you noticed asphalt art in your neighborhood? On the contrary, an area that lacks this street smart initiative? Let us know where you'd like to see the Asphalt Initiative next in KC.