Every day and in every way, this gets dumber and dumber.
Photo credit: City of Bedford
Two crosswalks painted by students in Bedford will be removed this month, in line with a new Texas state policy banning “non-standard surface markings, signage, and signals that do not directly support traffic control or safety.”
While the artworks in front of Bedford Junior High and Harwood Junior High are not political in nature, the city was unable to secure exemptions for them to remain in place.
The artworks, featuring colorful designs of abstract shapes and tentacles, were created by students in the Hurst-Euless-Bedford Independent School District. The city said in a press release that it was able to connect with the family of the Harwood Junior High artist. The Bedford Junior High artist’s contact information, however, has not been found.
City officials said the decision to remove the artworks “was not made locally nor taken lightly,” but is instead a “direct result” of an Oct. 8 directive from Gov. Greg Abbott.
“We are truly disappointed to lose these meaningful pieces of community art, which brought color, pride, and student creativity to our school zones,” according to the release.
The release noted that under new state policy, the Texas Department of Transportation requires municipalities “to remove non-standard markings or risk losing state and federal transportation funding and future agreements with the agency.”
Work to begin removing the artworks in Bedford is scheduled to begin on November 24. It is expected to take less than a week to complete.
See here for previous crosswalk blogging, including the forthcoming removal of the Buddy Holly crosswalk in Lubbock. I’m just collecting these stories as I see them, to document the ridiculousness of it all. Will Greg Abbott ever speak of this again? Probably not, he accomplished what he wanted and the rest he’ll ignore. But that doesn’t mean we can’t bring it up.
The main point of interest here is that Bedford apparently tried and failed to get an exemption for these crosswalks. This makes me wonder about the process, since cities like Dallas and San Antonio have also asked for exemptions, in their cases for actual rainbow crosswalks, and as far as I am aware those requests are still in progress. It just makes me wonder about the timing and what if any factors are being taken into consideration. I mean, the Bedford crosswalks, like the Buddy Holly one, are about as apolitical as you can imagine, and yet they’re going to be erased. Doesn’t give much hope for San Antonio and Dallas, not that I had any to begin with, but if the answer is always going to be No then this was never about “political messaging” to begin with. Just something to think about in the event this escalates to legal challenges.
As I’ve said before, these crosswalks are far more obvious, which ought to be a good thing from the safety perspective.
Also it’s nice from the esthetic perspective.
Oh, it’s about political messaging, all right – the message being Bend The Knee to MAGA, no matter who you are.