For artist Graham Coreil-Allen and his team, Baltimore’s streets are the perfect canvas.

You’ve likely seen their work — intersections where the pavement is covered with bright colors and a fun design. Neighborhood and community groups all over Baltimore have hired Coreil-Allen and his company, Graham Projects, for similar pieces, typically in conjunction with a city traffic-calming initiative.

They do it not just to try to beautify the area but to keep people from getting hit by cars.

“It enhances the visual contrast between the car lanes and the pedestrian space,” Coreil-Allen said over the lawn mower-like sound of an asphalt grinder on a hot June morning. A crew was adjusting the white lane markings on East Baltimore Street and South East Avenue near Patterson Park to prevent cars from parking too close to the intersection and blocking sightlines. Then they’d get painting.

The idea is simple: Make a section of the road that pedestrians share with vehicles bright and cool-looking so drivers are more likely to pay attention when they approach it. Throw in plastic flex posts to serve as additional visual cues and extend the area designated for pedestrians, so drivers are more likely to slow down because it feels like the roadway narrows.

Many love this so-called “art in the right of way.” Beyond just looking nice, they say, research suggests it can lead to a reduction in crashes. But such projects also spark pushback from drivers, particularly those with larger vehicles, who argue it clogs the roads without creating the desired safety effects.

The process is part artistry, part engineering nerdery.

The paint is really colored epoxy, designed to stick to the petroleum-based binder in asphalt, Coreil-Allen said, and the mixture includes a type of sand that helps prevent people from slipping and makes it compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act. The team van resembles a mobile warehouse — full of pigments, chemicals, brush rollers and more.

“Every bump-out has a story behind it,” said Lydia Milano, one of Coreil-Allen’s colleagues, as she prepared a section of North East Avenue for a coat of pink.

This design is simple — just bright, single colors at the neighborhood’s request. Others can be more complicated.

“Like, this wouldn’t be here if something hadn’t happened,” Milano said. The “something” is usually a bad crash or other safety concern.

“We had been seeing and hearing a lot about cars that are just driving down [East Baltimore Street] way too fast like it’s a highway or something,” said Ernest Le, president of the Patterson Park Neighborhood Association. “There was a lot of demand from the neighbors to do something to get people to slow down and treat it more like a street that belongs to pedestrians, bikes and cars equally.”

Le and his neighbors got a state grant through the Department of Housing and Community Development for the intersection painting. Coreil-Allen’s team took care of the design, which neighbors then approved, Le said. Neighbors have noticed a difference.

As with any roadway change, though, not everyone is a fan.

As the team was painting, a heavy truck stopped on South East Avenue. The driver rolled down his window to ask the crew members what they were doing — before they could respond, he called the project unsafe and a “waste of money.”

“Look at this, I can’t turn,” the driver said as he slowly turned his vehicle onto East Baltimore Street and approaching cars slowed to allow him to do so.

For Coreil-Allen, the interaction proves the whole point — the design is reviewed by transportation engineers to ensure larger vehicles like buses can handle it; they may just have to slow down.

“What it contributes to overall is a larger shift in driving behavior and culture so that it isn’t just about trying to blast through these historic, walkable neighborhoods at top speed,” he said. “These are all your neighbors. Let’s all watch out for each other and take it slow and easy.”

They’re training others on how to paint intersections, too, pointing neighborhoods to resources such as the “Made You Look” tool kit, developed by Maryland Institute College of Art students alongside the nonprofit Neighborhood Design Center and state highway planners, that gives step-by-step instructions.

Plenty of other neighborhoods have done it.

Closer to downtown, in Johnston Square, the neighborhood association got painted pedestrian bump-outs installed a couple of years ago outside the elementary school. Before, neighbors regularly saw cars speeding past the school on East Biddle Street — a traffic study showed some going as fast as 80 mph — and worried that it was only a matter of time before a child got hit, said Regina Hammond, founder and director of the Rebuild Johnston Square Neighborhood Organization.

“Don’t they know we live here?” Hammond asked. “Why is this traffic so fast?”

Speeding still happens, but the installations have helped — a study by the Neighborhood Design Center found more than twice as many drivers yield to crossing pedestrians. Plus, it’s made school pickup easier — parents tell their kids where to meet them based on the intersection’s color, Hammond said.

As residents fled to the suburbs, streets were increasingly designed for getting cars in and out of the city as fast as possible to the detriment of neighborhoods like Johnston Square, Hammond said. Now, hers is in the midst of a revival, as overhauls of vacant houses and brand-new developments create a new sense of place — and she sees small roadway changes like this as a part of that revitalization.

“We’re trying to change that narrative,” she said.