Painting the roads black and white is dumb

I’m just gonna say it. The Florida Department of Transportation’s recent crackdown on pavement art is dumb, futile, and wasteful.

Across the country, cities have embraced street murals and crosswalk art as low-cost tools for placemaking, safety, and community pride. Florida, instead, has chosen to pour time and money into scrubbing them off the asphalt.

It’s a petty war against creativity that does nothing to improve safety and only deepens the disconnect between the agency and the neighborhoods its roads divide. Public art deserves better than bureaucracy with a paint scraper.