Mayor Jane Castor's "Crosswalks to Classrooms" Initiative is a public art project focused on road safety
This morning, the City of Tampa, Artist Jay Giroux, Walk Bike Tampa, and volunteers will paint a new, brightly-colored crosswalk for students at Just Elementary School. The street mural, located at the corner of Oregon and Spruce Streets in West Tampa, is designed to create safer ways for students to cross the street to school.
These crosswalk murals are painted to catch the attention of drivers and calm traffic as vehicles slow for crossing students. This helps reinforce that streets are not just for cars; they are places where children walk to get to school. This is part of an ongoing public art project, focused on traffic safety, as a part of Mayor Jane Castor's Crosswalks to Classrooms initiative.
The public, alongside members of the media, are free to come and watch as Jay Giroux, an artist with READ Movement, and a team of volunteers use paint and stencils to create a street mural in the crosswalk.
This street mural is being constructed with the support of the City of Tampa Mobility Department and the Arts and Cultural Affairs Department. This mural is sponsored by the local non-profit organization Walk Bike Tampa.
Mayor Jane Castor’s Crosswalks to Classrooms initiative is one key facet of her administration’s commitment to Vision Zero, a global network of cities aiming to eliminate pedestrian, bicyclist, and vehicular deaths on roadways.
The city’s first artful crosswalk was unveiled in November 2019 at Rampello K-8 Magnet School, at the intersection of Washington and Jefferson streets in downtown Tampa. Its design feature titles of popular children’s books such as Harry Potter, To Kill a Mockingbird, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
More enhanced pedestrian crossings are set to be painted near schools throughout Tampa this year.