Downtown Hampton receives vibrant crosswalk facelift

Pedestrians in downtown Hampton may have noticed a recent splash of color to city streets.

Last week, Larry Craighton, contracted through the City of Hampton, worked to paint downtown crosswalks a brighter shade of red out-lined by fresh, white lines.

City of Hampton Public Works Director Doug Tarr said the project coincided with the city’s annual efforts to repaint crosswalk lines throughout town. He said this year, the schedule worked to fit in repainting the colored stamped asphalt patterns on the downtown crosswalks.

“The paint on the original started to fade over time, so we’ve just started getting those updated,” he said. “For right now, it’s a good time to spruce things up and get some maintenance work done.”

He said Craighton was able to obtain a brighter shade of red specialty paint for the crosswalks, whereas the Iowa DOT, which usually supplies crosswalk paint, typically distributes more traditional traffic control colors.

“We’ve had the council in the past bring up comments about it being brighter, so we had that in mind this time,” Tarr said. “This isn’t paint we would typically get from the DOT.”

Tarr said there’s no particular safety reason behind the brighter crosswalks, but they bring an added aesthetic element to Hampton’s downtown.

“When the white application goes on after (the red paint), it makes it pop and they do look good,” he said. “It’s an added novelty to downtown for a low cost and keeping it maintained and painted up right makes for a better looking downtown ar-ea.”