Dallas Could Get Its Colorful Crosswalks Back: Council Member Chad West Asks the City to Take the Request to Governor-Elect Hinojosa
Eight months after Dallas scraped its decorative crosswalks off the pavement under a state order, Council Member Chad West has formally asked City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert to take the restoration case to Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa — starting with 12 crosswalks, including the rainbow crossings of Oak Lawn.
DALLAS — The crosswalks Dallas removed last spring could come back under a new governor. In a memorandum dated November 10, Council Member Chad West asked City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert to contact Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa's office and formally seek reconsideration of the 2025 Texas Department of Transportation directive that forced the removals, FOX 4 and the Dallas Focal reported. West's request covers 12 crosswalks, and he told FOX 4 that Tolbert is behind the push.
The removals were the end of a fight Dallas lost. In October 2025, TxDOT Executive Director Marc Williams issued a directive prioritizing uniformity and predictability in traffic control devices statewide, after Gov. Greg Abbott called for decorative designs to come out and threatened to withhold state funding from cities that kept what he called political messaging on their roads. Dallas asked for an exception covering 30 crosswalks on November 6, 2025; TxDOT denied it on January 15, 2026, saying the intersections did not meet Texas Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices requirements. The city's compliance plan followed on January 30, and the crosswalks — the rainbow crossings in Oak Lawn and the Black Lives Matter crossings in Fair Park among them — were removed in March and April. One person was arrested after trying to repaint a rainbow in Oak Lawn.
West's memo argues the case on safety, economics and community meaning: many of the crosswalks were privately funded, he wrote, the evidence shows decorative crosswalks can be safer than traditional ones, and the designs drive activity in commercial districts like Oak Lawn and Uptown. 'There's a lot of priorities in the state and a lot of very important issues to face. This is, to me, a pretty easy one,' West told FOX 4's Amelia Jones. 'So now we've got a new regime. We're hoping to see a little bit more tolerance and more of a focus on what's really important in the state.'
Nothing is restored yet: the request rests with the city manager's office, which has not publicly said whether it will formally petition the governor-elect, and Hinojosa does not take office until she is sworn in on January 19. What has changed is the address the request goes to — the administration that ordered the crosswalks out is leaving, and Dallas's first move of the transition is to ask the incoming one to let the paint come back.
