First published November 6, 2017.
In September 2017, the Icelandic fishing town of Ísafjörður painted a pedestrian crossing that looks as if its white stripes are solid blocks hovering above the asphalt. The idea came from Ralf Trylla, the town's environment officer, who wanted a way to make drivers ease off without installing another speed bump. The street-marking firm Vegmálun GÍH did the painting, and photographs by Ágúst G. Atlason of Gústi Productions carried the "floating" crosswalk around the world within weeks.
The short answer to the question most people ask is this: yes, it is just flat paint, and no, nobody has shown that it permanently slows traffic in Ísafjörður. What it does do, very well, is catch a driver's eye at the moment that matters.
A small town with a narrow street
Ísafjörður sits on a spit of land inside a fjord in the Westfjords of north-west Iceland, with a population of roughly 2,600. Its centre is compact, the streets are tight, and steep mountains rise straight behind the houses, which is why the photos look so dramatic. The crossing was painted on a one-way street in the middle of town.
Trylla told the World Economic Forum that he had been searching for alternatives to conventional speed bumps, which drivers dislike because of the jolt and the wear on suspension. He had come across similar illusion crossings from India online; My Modern Met reported that the specific example he saw was in New Delhi.
The finished crossing, photographed from the driver's side. From this angle the shadows on the right of each stripe make the bars read as raised blocks. Photo: Gústi Productions.
How the painters made flat stripes "float"
The technique is a modern take on trompe-l'oeil, the old painter's trick of fooling the eye into seeing depth on a flat surface. Each white bar is paired with a dark grey band painted along one side, so the brain reads the grey as a shadow cast by a block sitting above the road. A thin lighter strip on another edge suggests the top face catching light.
According to the WEF report, Gautur Ívar Halldórsson, co-owner of the marking company, laid out the lines with chalk, wooden planks and a small handheld paint gun, working out the angles so the effect would hold from an approaching car. My Modern Met noted that the team experimented for several weeks before settling on the method. The company also said it was testing reflective, pearlescent paints so the effect could work at night.
Two workers from Vegmálun GÍH mark out and paint the stripes on the one-way street in the town centre. The building in the background is a useful reference point for how small the street really is. Photo: Gústi Productions (Ágúst G. Atlason).
This short animation shows the trick from the approach. As the viewpoint changes, the "blocks" seem to shift, which is exactly what makes a driver look twice. Animation: Gústi Productions.
Why the illusion only works from one direction
A painted shadow can only be correct for one viewing angle. For a driver coming down the street, the perspective lines up and the bars appear to stand up. For a pedestrian standing on the crossing, or someone viewing it from the side, the stripes flatten back into odd, stretched shapes. That is fine for the purpose: the people who need to be surprised are the ones behind the wheel.
The same rule explains why the photos vary so much. Shots taken low and from the road's centre line look the most three-dimensional; shots from the pavement show the trick more honestly.
A pedestrian in a high-visibility vest steps across, appearing to walk on top of the blocks. The effect depends on the camera standing where a driver would be. Photo: Vegmálun GÍH.
A visitor poses on one of the "floating" stripes with the mountains of the fjord behind. Within weeks the crossing had become a small photo spot in its own right. Photo: Linda Björk Pétursdóttir.
Does a 3D crosswalk actually slow drivers?
Early coverage often claimed that drivers now always slow down. The honest picture is more modest. Trylla himself said there had never been a recorded accident at that junction, so it was hard to judge whether safety had improved, though he observed that people were clearly driving differently and called the trial a success so far. No before-and-after speed figures for Ísafjörður have been published that we could find.
Elsewhere, measured results suggest the effect is real but fades. A 2020 study in the journal Sustainability tested a floating, piano-key style crossing outside a school in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Speeds of cars and motorcycles dropped by around 10 to 15 percent in the first two weeks, then crept back up after about three weeks and were close to the old levels by week twelve. The authors pointed to two reasons: regular drivers got used to the illusion, and the paint faded and collected dirt.
That matches what people would expect from any surprise. The first time you see it, you brake. By the fiftieth time, you know it is paint.
What towns can learn from Ísafjörður
None of this makes the crossing a failure. It is cheap compared with rebuilding a street, it does not damage cars or shake passengers, and it makes a crossing far more noticeable to visitors and new drivers, who are often the ones least familiar with a street. A few practical lessons stand out:
- Measure it. Record speeds before painting and for several months afterwards, not just in the first week.
- Maintain it. Faded shadows lose the effect, so repainting is part of the cost.
- Combine it. Narrower lanes, kerb extensions and good lighting do the long-term work; the illusion adds attention on top.
- Think about every user. A crossing that looks like a row of obstacles should still read clearly as a crossing to cyclists and to people with low vision.
The crossing seen from further back, where the stripes start to look like a low row of white blocks across the lane. Seen from a distance, the illusion acts mostly as an early warning. Photo: Vegmálun GÍH.
The idea keeps spreading
After Ísafjörður, floating crosswalks appeared in many places, from European towns to school zones in Asia and the Americas. Halldórsson told reporters that more were planned locally, including one placed away from traffic at a viewpoint over the town, purely for the photographs. That small detail sums up the project well: part road-safety experiment, part public art, and a good conversation starter about how streets are designed.
If you see one on your travels, try viewing it from a driver's angle and then from the kerb. Watching the "blocks" collapse back into paint is half the fun.
(The video originally embedded here is no longer available on YouTube.)
Sources: World Economic Forum: A small town in Iceland created a "levitating" crosswalk (2017); My Modern Met: 3D zebra stripe crosswalk in Iceland (2017); Pichayapan et al., Sustainability 12(16):6464 (2020). Photos: Ágúst G. Atlason / Gústi Productions, Vegmálun GÍH and Linda Björk Pétursdóttir.
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