Neighbours paint crossings in LA to protect pedestrians

World Half Full
Nov 28, 2025
5 min read

RIGHTS/COMMUNITY

Painting a pedestrian crossing is cheap and easy. A group of neighbours can paint an entire intersection in one morning for US$100 or less. Getting the city of Los Angeles to do it, on the other hand, might take 14 years and the death of a nine-year-old boy. Across LA, neighbours are banding together to paint crossings to protest the city’s failure to protect people crossing the street.

Jonathan Hale, a UCLA law student, spent four Saturday mornings painting crossings with neighbours at Stoner Park this past northern summer, covering each corner of the park. After the city removed them, he went to the media and vowed to repaint them.

“I was like, ‘Next Saturday, we’ll be out there, and you’ll have to deal with it. It’ll be a spectacle.’ And, like, everybody kind of hates you right now.”

The city painted official crossings a week later.

Now, Hale is leading a new group, called People’s Vision Zero, to continue to paint crossings across the city to push for safer streets.

Painting guerrilla crossings in LA is not new; the anonymous group Crossings Collective LA has been doing it since 2022. However, what’s new is: Hale is putting his name and face to the movement, challenging the city to take a public stance on vigilante crossings.

“I was in hot water with the city attorney’s office,” he says. “They don’t like me. People on Reddit [were] threatening to go to the bar. It was scary.”

Painting unofficial crossings is not without its legal and financial consequences. During one operation, an employee at the city’s transportation department called the police; Crossing Collective members were each fined US$250 with the threat of US$1,000 tickets if they re-offended.

Still, Hale’s approach seems to be working so far.

While the Crossings Collective sometimes paints new crossings in secret, Hale says he is alerting the mayor’s office every time he takes paint to pavement.

“I just want the city to admit they’re wrong and that the system is broken. That’s it. If the city does that publicly, I’ll give it up,” he says.

The city is failing to meet the goal of Vision Zero first set in 2015. From 2017 to 2021, traffic deaths and severe injuries grew by 13% with an average of 132 pedestrians killed annually.

Painting a crossing as a concerned citizen might be a crime, but it doesn’t have to be. The city of Atlanta began a tactical urbanism program in 2020 for temporary, quick-build projects that modify the street to make it safer for walking, bike riding and rolling. Under the program, community members can make street improvements in their own neighbourhoods. Residents recently built a bike lane for US$10,000 on a school route.

“Temporary” might be a misnomer, says Rebecca Serna, executive director of Propel ATL, the street safety nonprofit that pushed for Atlanta to adopt the program. All but one tactical urbanism project is still in place. “The de facto fact of the matter is that they have been somewhat permanent, more permanent than anticipated,” she says.

The city is trying to improve and streamline the permit process, according to Serna, to make it easier for community organisations to do their own crossings.

Cities are already asking residents to roll up their sleeves, points out Carter Lavin, co-founder of the Transbay Coalition and author of If You Want to Win, You’ve Got to Fight. In LA, Mayor Karen Bass is mobilising Angelenos to spend their Saturdays picking up litter and cleaning city streets. Lavin’s organisation is working with the city of Richmond, California, to make guerrilla bus benches on the footpath legal.

“What I recommend is for the city who’s uncomfortable with the crossing thing, one, get comfortable with the crossing thing,” Lavin says. “But if that is just so impossible of a burden for them for whatever reason, okay, legalise benches.”

Could a street safety champion emerge in LA? Heather Hutt, LA city council member and chair of the transport committee, is actively working to make long-awaited improvements at a Koreatown intersection where a nine-year-old boy was hit and killed in July. Crossings Collective LA painted crossings and a memorial in August, which the city replaced with official crossings and a quick-build traffic circle in November.

LA probably won’t undertake a tactical urbanism program, says Michael Schneider, founder of Streets for All, a transport advocacy organisation. “The city is incredibly conservative because it gets sued so often,” he says.

Even if the city council passed a motion to study how to implement a tactical urbanism program it’s unlikely to be implemented, Schneider believes. “The city is basically run by the city attorney when it comes to stuff like this.”

If the current crop of council members don’t champion tactical urbanism, perhaps future council members will. Already, two people running for city council have joined People’s Vision Zero to paint crossings.

However the city chooses to respond, the crossing movement is taking on a life of its own.

“The city would be really wise to formalise, create some kind of an outlet for that energy so it can work towards the greater good and not work at cross purposes,” Serna says.

After the city repainted crossings at Stoner Park, Hale met with the mayor’s office to present policy recommendations, including decriminalising vigilante crossings. The city is facing a budget crisis and a backlog of broken footpaths and missing curb ramps.

City staff were appreciative of his advocacy but also “a little condescending”, he says. “It was very much like, ‘Oh, thank you for your advocacy. But you know, you’re young and idealistic, and you need to understand that [. . .] these rules exist for a reason’.”

Following the rules can take millions of dollars and many years to achieve. For example, one project was first proposed in 2011, funded in 2015, with the design phase taking four years. Construction is slated to begin in 2026.

On November 8, People’s Vision Zero painted crossings at an intersection where a driver hit a pedestrian in 2017. About 20 people showed up — the biggest group yet.

“I first heard about this on a Reddit post,” says Luis Fernando Anguiano Quiroz, an urban designer and planning graduate student at UCLA. “This is my neighbourhood, so I wanted to build community and get to know my neighbours.”

The mood and the weather were bright. People took turns rolling out the paint and pulling up the tape, which is the most satisfying part of the process. Waiting for the paint to dry, they chatted about their favourite TV shows.

This is the tenth intersection People’s Vision Zero has painted, and it won’t be the last. What happened at Stoner Park only made Hale more determined to keep going. “It’s awesome. It feels so good. I love my neighbours. It was so touching to see the news, and to see my neighbours interviewed on the news, just saying they appreciate it,” he says.

TOP Painting the crossing

BOTTOM Finishing up: the great reveal

PHOTOS Maylin Tu