Installation of a rainbow-colored crosswalk at an intersection in San Antonio’s LGBTQIA district began Wednesday morning and was expected to be completed by Wednesday afternoon.
City Council voted unanimously June 7 to accept donated funds for the cost of the special crosswalk at North Main Avenue and East Evergreen Street after Pride San Antonio presented almost $20,000 in privately raised contributions.
A community discussion and ribbon-cutting ceremony is set for Friday afternoon to mark the project’s completion ahead of Saturday’s Pride parade. The parade route travels down North Main Avenue starting at the intersection with Dewey Place.
“I’m really happy and really pleased that the community, both City and our community, all came together and this has finally materialized,” said Randy Cunniff, president of The Strip San Antonio, a collection of businessesthat includes HEAT nightclub, Sparky’s Pub, Luther’s Cafe, and Knockout. “It just solidifies us, validates us.”
A livestream of the installation drew thousands of views, reactions, and shares throughout the morning as crews painted the crosswalk with swaths of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, white, and black.
San Antonio’s rainbow crosswalk gets installed today at N. Main Ave & Evergreen. A symbol of pride, unity, and acceptance representing the diversity of the LGBTQ+ community and its allies.
Posted by HRC San Antonio on Wednesday, 27 June 2018
Construction plans for painting the four crosswalks at the intersection were rescheduled from overnight work spanning two days to one day’s worth of work on Wednesday to better accommodate requests for media coverage, according to Paul Berry, chief communications officer for the City’s Transportation & Capital Improvements (TCI) Department.
City officials previously determined that the intersection’s existing crosswalks were “past their functional service life and need to be replaced,” according to documents submitted by TCI. The City contributed $12,668.80 – the cost for repainting a standard crosswalk – to the $32,501.04 project, with the private donations covering the balance.
With the installation of the crosswalks, TCI will begin a six-month pilot program during which staff will collect data on how pedestrians and drivers react to the colorful crosswalks. The data collected will be used to assess the safety of the crosswalks and develop future processes for considering creative crosswalk applications.
