City will not pay for crosswalks. Concerned citizens paint crosswalks for free. City then pays to remove crosswalks.

Tired of waiting for the city of Tacoma, Wash. to paint crosswalks on its reputedly hazardous streets, a group of anonymous Tacoma residents – including some city employees – has taken to painting crosswalks themselves.

The group calls itself “Citizens for a Safer Tacoma,” – and Tacoma’s city government is determined to crack down on its “rogue crosswalks” and prosecute anyone caught painting them.

“In Tacoma, the law is the law,” KING 5 news reports.

The city spends up to $1000 removing each illegal crosswalk. Incidentally, this is also the price of painting a legal crosswalk.

So why bother removing the crosswalks? And why didn’t the city paint the crosswalks itself in the first place?

Because, says Tacoma’s Interim Public Works Director, city crosswalks must comply with federal guidelines related to sight distance, traffic volume and street width.

Libertarians often object to the fact that local governments are given little power to manage their own internal affairs. Tacoma’s crosswalk crackdown is a timely illustration of just how severe this problem is: cities are not even in charge of their own crosswalks.

“We’re not asking for major infrastructure changes,” says a spokesman for Citizens for a Safer Tacoma.

“All we’re asking for is a little bit of paint.”





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