Dallas City Council members resumed a debate Wednesday over whether to support Texas Department of Transportation’s “hybrid trench” recommendation for Interstate 345.
TxDOT engineer Ceason Clemens tried to make it easy for them. Clemens reiterated throughout the two-plus-hour briefing that the highway department is committed to the hybrid option, won’t fund an alternative, and delays caused by further study could be detrimental to securing funding.
“I would never recommend a boulevard to our commission,” Clemens said. “We looked at the traffic impacts. It just doesn’t make sense. We really think we can provide a benefit to the users of the facility as well as the adjacent communities with our hybrid alternative. In my opinion, it would never get to the commission because my responsibility is to recommend projects and I would not recommend anything other than the hybrid.”
A council vote is expected May 24 on a resolution of support for TxDOT’s plan to trench the highway 65 feet below ground on the east side of downtown, making way for traffic to flow on decks over the roadway. About 5.4 acres of surplus right-of-way would be available to the city to purchase for housing and economic development.
Finding Alternative Funding Sources
The council’s Transportation and Infrastructure Committee voted 5-2 Monday to support the hybrid trench option, effectively dismissing a five-signature memo filed last month calling for an independent study of the project.
Following Wednesday’s council briefing, District 1 Councilman Chad West acknowledged that exploring other options rather than supporting TxDOT’s solution could be more costly to the city, but the city hasn’t looked into any additional funding sources.
“TxDOT reminded us that they have funding available to support the trench but would not pay at this time for anything else,” West said, recapping Monday’s transportation committee meeting. “If we do anything besides TxDOT’s plan, we’ve got to find the funding for it. Staff also acknowledged at that meeting that they had not approached our congressional representatives or anyone at the department of transportation to look for funding for an alternative design or for a study for an alternative design.”
Detroit recently secured $100 million from the Reconnecting Communities Grant to take down a highway, and Dallas staff has not explored whether any such funding can be pursued locally, West added.
Weighing Options Against The “Hybrid Trench”
Dallas Neighbors for Housing, an activist group that has opposed TxDOT’s hybrid trench recommendation, created a website addressing the matter and has called a public meeting for May 23, the night before the council vote, to rally support for its mission “to replace I-345 with affordable housing, green space, and targeted economic investment while making reparations to communities harmed by the initial erection of I-345.”
District 7 resident Sarah Hughes addressed the City Council on Wednesday, saying she drives on I-345 five days a week to get to her job at the nonprofit Parks for Downtown Dallas.
“I’m here … to urge the City Council to conduct an independent study and not approve TxDOT’s hybrid alternative,” Hughes said. “Something needs to be done with this aging highway — that is for sure — but it is an extraordinary risk to approve a 10-lane trench without solid funding commitment to build decks on top. Without the capping, TxDOT’s plan creates a literal canyon between downtown and Deep Ellum, further separating these neighborhoods.”
Alan Zreet, representing Downtown Dallas Inc.’s mobility committee, spoke in support of the hybrid option with several prioritized bullet points.
Zreet said the mobility committee wants to prioritize pedestrians, accommodate appropriate infrastructure for future decking, accommodate multimodal connections, improve the street grid and connectivity between downtown and Deep Ellum, minimize impacts to Carpenter Park, and incorporate elements from the Downtown 360 Plan and CityMAP study.
“DDI’s focus to date has been in offering guiding principles to TxDOT and the city for all the options that are on the table,” he said. “We’d like to go on record that DDI does support the TxDOT hybrid alternative on the condition that the above principles are adopted and considered as part of the design as it advances.”
The Future of Interstate 345
District 2 Councilman Jesse Moreno, who represents Deep Ellum, has shown interest in the “boulevard option,” but Clemens said that’s no longer a possibility.
“I was somewhat disappointed in the May 8 panel, which I believe was stacked with only one member supporting an option outside of the hybrid option,” Moreno said. “I believe staff was not prepared for that briefing. We had directors letting us know they’d just learned about this 15 minutes ago and yet they were so adamant about supporting a plan they had not been fully briefed on. I found that concerning.”
Clemens explained that TxDOT has been working on the project for 15 years and construction costs aren’t getting any cheaper.
District 13 Councilwoman Gay Donnell Willis advocated for waiting a year to make a decision, pointing out that city plans, including racial equity, economic development, and environmental documents, have not been considered during the planning of the hybrid option.
“These plans that this body and those before us have been working on — that should be very present in a decision of this magnitude — are just not there,” Willis said. “What I heard [Assistant City Manager Robert Perez] say is that we’ll land on something and line it up and see what works, and we’ll either retrofit or it’ll just fall off. If it doesn’t fit but we’re already charging ahead with this plan, what happens with some of the critical aspects of the hard work that’s been done? I would love to be sitting here in June 2024 soundly showing support and making a decision because we have information that includes what we have put blood, sweat, and tears into … that very much affects our residents and the future of this city when we are long gone.”
