Wylie, TX Public Conduct: Loitering Rules (2026)

Adopted by Ordinance No. 2025-13 on March 25, 2025, section 110-208 makes it an offense to stand, sit, run or loiter on a roadway median that measures less than eight feet wide, or to approach a motor vehicle operating on a major thoroughfare, freeway or access road. The rule targets the panhandling and vending activity that clusters on narrow medians along corridors such as State Highway 78, where a median under eight feet gives a pedestrian almost no separation from moving traffic. The section builds in five affirmative defenses a defendant may raise: lawfully and actively crossing a divided roadway by the most direct route, giving or receiving emergency aid, acting immediately and reasonably to prevent bodily injury or death, performing permitted work in the right-of-way under chapter 102, and performing city, state or federal work to protect public health, safety or welfare, including police, fire and utility maintenance crews.

Because these are affirmative defenses rather than exceptions to the offense itself, the burden falls on the person cited to raise and prove one at trial rather than on the city to disprove it, consistent with the burden-shifting rule in the chapter 110 general penalty, section 1-13(i). No fine amount is stated in section 110-208 itself, so a citation is punished under that same general penalty as a Class C misdemeanor, and Wylie police officers are the enforcing agency for the corridor medians the ordinance targets.