Dallas Delays Vote on I-345 Plans

On Tuesday morning, the local group Dallas Neighbors for Housing put out a call on social media about an upcoming vote by the City Council.

“Urgent,” the post read. “Email and sign up to speak at the February 22nd City Council meeting to stop [the Texas Department of Transportation] from bullying the city of Dallas into passing a resolution in support of their plan for I-345.”

The post included links to information about the controversial highway and an email already typed up and ready for residents to send to City Council members. People must have been paying attention, because by the end of the day, D Magazine would report the vote was removed from the City Council’s Feb. 22 agenda. Councilman Omar Narvaez, chair of Dallas’ Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, told D Magazine that the agenda item was removed “to allow some of my colleagues to have more time to get questions answered … and to allow for a general public discussion prior to any vote.”

To Caleb Roberts, a board member with the local environmental group Downwinders at Risk, it’s a good thing the vote will be delayed because the whole process has felt rushed. Roberts, an urban planner by trade, lives near I-345 on Ross Avenue in Dallas. “So, I’m affected by whatever happens there, within a rock’s throw of 345,” Roberts said.

“I think they’re trying to push this forward and, honestly, we feel like the process is rushed,” he said, “rushed to not have an opportunity for other people to chime in and say what they want for Dallas.”

He thinks the City Council needs more time to consider all its options. “This City Council should be slow to give approval to this and exhaust all options just because of the size of this thing and the amount of space we’re talking about,” Roberts said.

There’s a lot of history involved here.

Deep Ellum became the Black business center of Dallas in the late 1800s and into the 1900s. But the building of I-345 was a major blow to Deep Ellum, leading many businesses to fail. In the ’60s and ’70s residents moved out. Future road widenings caused more displacement and decline in the neighborhood. To Roberts and others, removing I-345 could be a step toward rectifying that displacement and giving back to the neighborhood.

“We want to create places where people drive to, not through.” – Caleb Roberts, Downwinders at Risk

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“We think this is a great opportunity to talk about some of the history of what 345 took away from this area, Black and Brown communities that were strong and really impactful before the highway got there,” Roberts said. “The highway took them out. … This is an opportunity to reclaim some of that space in a downtown area where you can do some mixed development.”

He said, “It’s a connecting piece between Deep Ellum and Downtown and we don’t have that walkable community right now.”

The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) held its first public meetings about the future of I-345 in 2012, according to Dallas Neighbors for Housing. This is around the time urban planner Patrick Kennedy and developer Brandon Hancock began advocating for the removal of I-345 and for it to be turned into a boulevard. In 2016, TxDOT published a study by CityMAP showing the potential of removing I-345.

In 2021, TxDOT released five options for I-345, and 12 City Council members endorsed the highway’s removal. But in May 2022, TxDOT endorsed a hybrid option that would create a submerged freeway with cross streets on a bridge above it.

By June 2022, TxDOT’s plan appeared to have garnered support from the City Council’s Transportation Committee members, none of whom spoke in support of removing I-345. Then at the end of last week, residents found out a vote in support of the hybrid plan would be taken up at the next City Council meeting.

TxDOT calls this a hybrid plan because it reconnects city streets with an overpass above I-345. According to Dallas Neighbors for Housing, this plan is more expensive and creates less connectivity than removing I-345 altogether. Removing I-345 would free up four times the amount of land that the hybrid plan would.

The city’s infrastructure and reliance on highways perpetuates poverty, according to Dallas Neighbors for Housing. The group says the poorest and most vulnerable residents in Dallas rely on public transit that can’t serve them because jobs and homes are so spread out.

According to the nonprofit research organization Urban Institute, Dallas is one of the least economically inclusive cities in the country. Research has suggested that the more spread out a city is the harder it is for residents to rise in socioeconomic status. The number of jobs in southern Dallas has decreased by 17% since 2000, according to Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research.

Removing I-345, the group says, would provide more land for housing and jobs in the urban core. These homes and jobs would be easily accessible by public transit. The group also says removing the highway would be better for the environment and people’s health. The noise and particulate matter highways create can cause health problems for people, especially when those highways go through dense urban areas.

So, why wouldn’t TxDOT support I-345’s removal? The state agency says studies have shown that doing so would lead to more traffic and other undesirable results.

Tony Hartzel, a spokesperson for TxDOT, said in an email to the Observer that the agency has “conducted extensive public involvement on the future of I-345.”

“The recommendation was the result of hundreds of stakeholder meetings, elected official briefings and extensive public involvement and public meetings with thousands of comments received,” Hartzel said.

There were several options on the table for I-345. It could be left as it is, removed, depressed or elevated. Hartzel said over half of respondents from the last round of public meetings supported the hybrid plan. Traffic studies predicted some commuters’ travel times would increase between 30% and 50% during peak times if I-345 is removed, he said. To TxDOT, this meant removal wasn’t a viable option.

“While all interested parties won’t agree with a single solution,” Hartzel said, “TxDOT’s process has developed an alternative that accommodates as many requests and goals as feasible that address mobility, connectivity, sustainability and community cohesion.”

Roberts sees it all a little differently.

“What TxDOT said at some of the meetings they’ve held is not that removal was bad but that it may negatively impact people,” Roberts said. “We really have to categorize what negative impact means. This doesn’t mean that people won’t be able to get to work. It’s just adding on to their travel time.”

He added: “But what you also get by removal is a space that people can go to. Highways are just about flowing through a place. We want to create places where people drive to, not through. So, it’s just a different understanding of what we need.”

As someone who lives in the area and works in the field of urban planning, Roberts thought he would have heard if there were any plans in the works for I-345. “I didn’t know what TxDOT was doing, where they were in their process,” he said. “I think that comes to a lack of actually hearing from the community. What do the people who live in the area want?”

Now that a vote on the I-345 plan has been delayed, Roberts hopes TxDOT, City Council members and their staff all have time to take the community’s wishes into consideration.