LEBANON — City crosswalks are getting a colorful makeover in downtown areas in an initiative to improve pedestrian safety and to touch up the aesthetics.

Public Works employees are painting a new crosswalk design on the streets surrounding Colburn Park and on Main Street in downtown West Lebanon.

Gone are the traditional monochrome white striped crosswalks. The new design is a solid interior fill of either red, yellow or orange contained within white borderlines.

The project is an experiment by the city to test which crosswalk color is most preferable in regard to visibility and durability, according to city officials. The city will evaluate the crosswalks for about a year and gather community feedback through public forums and correspondence.

“We are working really hard to make Lebanon a livable and walkable community, and a big part of that is making sure that people who are walking feel safe and for drivers to know where they may be interacting with pedestrians (crossing a street),” City Councilor Karen Liot Hill said.

The idea to explore colored crosswalks originated from the Pedestrian & Bicyclist Advisory Committee, a group created to help facilitate travel and safety for pedestrians and cyclists in the city.

“We’ve observed that some of the crosswalks around (Colburn Park) are hard for most of us to see,” said Colin Smith, chairman of the Pedestrian & Bicyclist Committee. “Making colored crosswalks is a really good way to further the city’s aim to improve pedestrian safety.” 

Despite some grumbling online about the aesthetics of the new crosswalks, municipal officials are looking forward to seeing the finished results.

Smith noted that in addition to seeing weather delays, this project has been a learning experience for public works employees, who are working with new types of paints as well as a new painting process.

“It’s important for people to have patience while they figure out the best way to do this,” Smith said.

Municipalities around the country, including in New Hampshire, have adopted or experimented with chromatic crosswalks as a way to improve their visibility, Smith said.

The Federal Highway Administration, which sets the rules for roadway signage and markings, permits the use of chromatic colors in sidewalks provided that they “are devoid of retroreflective properties” and “do not diminish the effectiveness of the legally required white transverse pavement markings used to establish the crosswalk.”

In other words, federal law requires the crosswalks to retain outer white borderlines that are clearly delineated from the interior fill. Secondly, the interior should be a uniform color that does not distract or impair a driver’s ability to identify the crosswalk, according to the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, a document of standards issued by the Federal Highway Administration.

The city is trying out red, orange and yellow hues, which are permitted by federal law. Hill said the city rejected some colors because of its use in other traffic markings. Blue, for example, is a standard color in signage for people with disabilities and green typically indicates bicycle lanes.

Hill said that many residents recently expressed confusion or disfavor of the crosswalks while they were in the process of being painted.

The city originally intended to complete the crosswalks during the spring when public works employees were striping around Colburn Park, but the project was continually interrupted by rainstorms, Hill said.

Many of the new crosswalks were halted temporarily after their first painting phase — just colored dash lines.

“People saw something new and many jumped to the conclusion that the crosswalks were fully finished,” Hill said.

As of Friday, the orange and yellow crosswalks are complete, though the red-striped crosswalks still need the white exterior borders. 

The crosswalks are painted in three sessions. The interior dash lines are painted in the first session. When those are dry, employees fill the remaining interior and give the dash lines a second coat. The exterior lines are painted in the third session.

Deputy City Manager of Public Services Nik Coates said the red-striped crosswalks will not be filled completely like the orange and yellow crosswalks, though they will receive white borders.

Coates explained that the red paint lacks the brightness and visibility of the other two colors. As a result these crosswalks will be replaced in the Spring with either the yellow or orange version. 

Shari Boraz, executive director of the AVA Gallery and Art Center, said her first impression of the newly completed crosswalks around the park was positive.

“Speaking as a driver, they really caused me to take notice of them, which was the goal of his project,” Boraz said. “The city wants to make it as easy for people to cross the street as possible.”

Hill said the city wants to study several variables and conditions during the next year when evaluating the different colored walks, including their visibility at night and during winter precipitation, which are most visible to people with colorblindness and the effects of road salt on the paint.

The city will also hold two listening sessions in the fall — one at City Hall and another at Kilton Library — to gather public feedback about the crosswalks.

“It’s going to  be very helpful to see how these new crosswalks work under various conditions and to get feedback from the community so we can make informed decisions later this year,” Hill said.

Patrick Adrian may be reached at padrian@vnews.com or at 603-727-3216.