Dallas Rainbow Crosswalks Removed: UP Mustang Intersection Next?

Crews began removing the rainbow-colored crosswalks along Cedar Springs Road in Dallas’s Oak Lawn neighborhood on Monday, March 30, ending months of friction between the city and state transportation officials. The removal puts a fresh spotlight on a question closer to home for Preston Hollow readers: what happens to the Mustang-themed decorative intersection near SMU in University Park?

The Cedar Springs crosswalks had been a fixture of Oak Lawn for years, marking one of Dallas’s most historically significant LGBTQ+ corridors. Their removal follows pressure from state officials who raised concerns about decorative pavement treatments on roadways under state jurisdiction. The Texas Department of Transportation has taken an increasingly firm position that non-standard markings on state-controlled roads create safety and liability complications, regardless of their cultural or community significance.

That same regulatory logic now hangs over University Park’s Mustang intersection, the decorative crosswalk treatment near SMU that reflects the school’s athletic identity and gives the surrounding neighborhood a distinctive sense of place. University Park operates as its own municipality, separate from Dallas, which gives it some independent standing. But roads that cross jurisdictional lines or fall under TxDOT authority don’t bend to city limits, and that’s where things get complicated.

University Park officials have not announced any plans to remove the Mustang intersection markings. The city has historically been protective of its character and resistant to outside pressure that it views as overreach. Residents there tend to feel strongly about the neighborhood’s identity, and the SMU connection runs deep. Those facts alone don’t insulate the intersection from the same regulatory scrutiny that caught up with Dallas.

The broader context here matters. Texas has been moving in a direction that limits what local governments can do with public infrastructure when it comes to expressive or decorative treatments. What began as a conversation about traffic safety standards has become something more pointed. Critics of the removal policy argue that state officials are selectively enforcing rules that have been on the books for years without complaint, and that the timing reflects political priorities rather than genuine safety concerns.

Supporters of the removals counter that consistency in road markings reduces driver confusion and that municipalities shouldn’t be using public infrastructure for political expression, however broadly or narrowly one defines that term.

Neither argument fully resolves the question for University Park. The Mustang crosswalk isn’t making a political statement in the same way the rainbow crosswalks were understood by their advocates and opponents alike. It’s a piece of civic boosterism tied to a private university with deep roots in the neighborhood. But regulators don’t always parse those distinctions the way communities do.

What University Park decides to do next, or is compelled to do, will say something about how much room Texas municipalities have to define their own streetscapes. It will also test whether the state applies its standards with any consistency or whether enforcement continues to follow a pattern that looks suspiciously like targeting.

For residents near SMU, the Mustang intersection is one of those small details that makes a neighborhood feel like itself rather than like every other stretch of suburban Dallas. That might seem like a minor thing measured against larger civic disputes, but anyone who has lived in Preston Hollow long enough knows that neighborhoods are built on exactly those kinds of accumulated details. Strip enough of them away and you’ve changed something that’s difficult to name but easy to feel.

The situation in Dallas’s Oak Lawn serves as a preview rather than a precedent. University Park will need to decide how hard it wants to fight, what legal ground it stands on, and whether its distinctive Mustang intersection is worth the political capital required to defend it. Based on the city’s track record, don’t expect a quiet surrender. But don’t assume that fighting spirit alone settles the matter either. TxDOT has shown it’s willing to wait municipalities out.

The crosswalks on Cedar Springs are coming up. The question of what comes next, in University Park and in communities across Texas watching this play out, is very much open.