The city of Dallas is requesting to be exempted from Gov. Greg Abbott’s order directing Texas cities to remove rainbow crosswalks and other non-standard road designs promoting “political ideologies,” according to a press release Friday.
City manager Kimberly Tolbert submitted the request to the Texas Department of Transportation Thursday, a day before the deadline for cities to comply with the order.
Tolbert’s letter asks for 30 crosswalks to be exempted, all within historically LGBTQ and Black neighborhoods.
“The city's decorative crosswalks are a form of government speech, expressing civic values and community identity through design in a manner that is consistent with the city's authority to manage and maintain its streets,” Tolbert said in the letter. “The state's demand for removal intrudes on that local authority and raises concerns under the unconstitutional condition’s doctrine, as it conditions continuing access to roadway funding on the suppression of lawful municipal expression.”
KERA News reached out to Abbott's office and will update this story with any response.
Tolbert also noted that recent data shows crosswalk designs do not contribute to public safety issues, but rather help navigation as a “clear visual boundary” between car lanes and pedestrian areas.
A 2022 Asphalt Art Safety Study from Bloomberg Philanthropies found higher safety performance across 17 sites where crosswalk art was installed.
The study reported the average of crash rates was 17.3% lower in the analysis periods after art installation. Additionally, the average of vulnerable user and injury crash rates were 49.6% and 36.5% lower in analysis periods after art was installed.
Abbott’s Oct. 8 statement said local governments had 30 days to remove any designs that don’t meet the rules. The governor added that non-compliant roadways on the state highway system or those funded through TxDOT must be modified.
Tolbert said removing privately funded crosswalks — like the iconic rainbow crosswalks in Oak Lawn — would require using public funds not included in the city’s recently approved budget.
The governor’s order came months after a letter from U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy in July, who urged governors to remove political messaging and artwork from roads. He also threatened to withhold federal roadway funding for cities and counties that didn’t comply.
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