San Antonio has formally asked the Texas Department of Transportation to approve an exemption allowing the city to keep its rainbow-colored crosswalks at North Main Avenue and East Evergreen Street, arguing that the intersection has become safer since the markings were installed in 2018.
In a Nov. 5 letter, Assistant City Manager John Peterek referenced Gov. Greg Abbott’s Oct. 8 directive that ordered TxDOT to ensure cities and counties remove “any and all political ideologies from our streets.”
The order warns that noncompliance could result in the loss of state and federal transportation funding and bans “non-standard surface markings, signage and signals that do not directly support traffic control or safety,” including “symbols, flags or other markings conveying social, political or ideological messages.”
That directive identified the intersection, located within the city’s Pride Cultural Heritage District, as being out of compliance with the new rule.
The city argues the rainbow design is not prohibited under the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Streets and Highways — the federal safety standard Texas adopts and TxDOT enforces. That manual defines traffic control devices as signs, signals and markings that communicate safety or regulatory information.
Because the rainbow pattern does not guide or regulate traffic, city officials contend it falls outside of TxDOT’s enforcement authority, since the department’s authority over roadway markings is derived from Texas Transportation Code 544.002, which ties regulation to the state’s adoption of the federal manual.
The Office of the City Manager pointed to a letter from the U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to Gov. Greg Abbott, which it says “prompted” TxDOT’s action. Duffy encouraged states to “get back to the basics — using data to guide decision-making.”
In response, the city reviewed crash and injury reports from the three years before and three years after the rainbow crosswalk’s installation and found fewer pedestrian incidents following its addition. The analysis showed two pedestrian injuries before installation, one in the three years after, and one incident since — three total in seven years.
By comparison, a nearby intersection without the rainbow design — North Main Avenue and Cypress Street — saw four pedestrian injuries during the same period.
See here, here, and here for some background. Dallas is also seeking an exemption but there’s not a lot of detail about where and on what grounds. Austin has said it will seek exemptions, but they have lots of potentially affected crosswalks and it wasn’t clear when I wrote this how many of them they would aim to protect.
I don’t know what will happen. It’s more likely than not that TxDOT will reject all of these applications and the crosswalks will be erased as Abbott demands. But at least they all will have tried, unlike Houston, where our gutless Mayor and Metro board rolled over in submission. Your choices define your legacy, that much I know.