SELMA – On a cool and cloudy morning, Selma High School students and teachers took time away from their spring break to paint an intersection along Thompson Avenue, potentially improving their peers’ safety.
With the shoulders of the road painted a bright orange and bearing black and white paw prints representative of the Selma High School mascot, the city wants to see if this will compel drivers to reduce their speeds as they travel past the school’s campus. The painted intersection at Thomspon and Lewis Street is the first in a series of pilot projects launched on April 17. The projects are part of the Selma Tactical Urbanism Safe Streets Study conducted by the city and contractor A&M Consulting Engineers.
“So tactical urbanism, it’s a thing that originated with residents doing simple things to try to slow cars down,” A&M Principal Civil Engineer Javier Andrade said. “If you picture a crossing guard that puts cones out on the street to kind of help facilitate the crossing, that’s kind of what the idea comes from.”
Selma received slightly more than $265,000 for its Tactical Urbanism Safe Streets Study. The funding came from the California Department of Transportation’s (Caltrans) Sustainable Transportation Planning Grant Program and was awarded in 2023. In March 2024, the city partnered with A&M Consulting Engineers to provide support services for the project.
For the pilot project, A&M engineers studied the road and intersection to measure vehicle speeds before the infrastructure improvements were put into place. Now that the intersection is painted, engineers will go back out and measure speeds again to see if the painted areas change driver behaviors.
At the intersection in question, Lewis Street meets Thompson Avenue in a “T,” and a crosswalk with Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacons (RRFBs) stretches across Thompson to protect students walking to the Selma High School campus and athletics facilities.
The pilot project painted the shoulders of the road on both sides of Lewis and along Thompson leading up to the crosswalk. In the middle of the crosswalk, an orange and black grizzly bear footprint stands out from the standard, faded yellow. The idea behind this design is that it shrinks the size of the roadway and draws attention to the crossing, encouraging drivers to be more cautious.
About a dozen Selma students — along with a few teachers, Selma city staff and A&M engineers — contributed by painting paw prints and circles on the areas of the road that were painted orange the day before by Selma public works staff. Andrade said that a key piece of the study is getting the local school district involved.
“I think when the students come out and they help paint the crosswalks, it really adds ownership to the project,” Andrade said. “So when they cross this crosswalk in the future, they … tell their parents to slow down because it’s the ownership part of it. It’s really important for the school districts.”
Andrade said the pilot study at the intersection is one of the bigger ones they’ll do in Selma. In total, A&M will help the city with three to five pilot studies that utilize a variety of small, affordable and quick changes to roadways to evaluate how drivers respond. Depending on what features lead to safer conditions, the city may look at more permanent or widespread improvements.
