This morning, the City Council received its biannual briefing from the Texas Department of Transportation regarding planning for I-345. That’s the 2.8-mile stretch of elevated highway between downtown and Deep Ellum, the concrete tendon that connects Interstates 45 and 30, Central Expressway, and Woodall Rodgers.
There wasn’t much news. The price tag to remove and trench the freeway is still $1.65 billion. That remains higher than earlier estimates of about $1 billion, but the cost hasn’t changed since Council was last briefed, in March. TxDOT hasn’t secured any funding and is continuing to work with Michael Morris, the transportation director of the North Central Texas Council of Governments, to find state and federal dollars for the project. It will likely need to be environmentally cleared before the Texas Transportation Commission, which allocates funding for enormous highways, adds I-345 to its 10-year funding plan. But considering the commission plans to allocate a record $104 billion for highway expansions across Texas next year, I-345 isn’t likely to face much trouble so long as the city embraces the project. (The transportation commission updates the plan every year, removing completed projects and adding new ones.) Ceason Clemens, TxDOT’s top engineer for the Dallas district, expects to receive environmental clearance next spring. She said the most “optimistic” timeline for the highway’s completion would be 10 years from now. She anticipates construction to take at least five years alone.
TxDOT is meeting with stakeholders such as Downtown Dallas Inc. and the Deep Ellum Foundation, as well as groups in neighborhoods like State Thomas. The schematics no longer include an exit onto Allen Street, which would have directed cars into Uptown and State Thomas. Baylor wants a better bypass to its flagship hospital in Old East Dallas, so the state is playing with a bypass underneath Live Oak for emergency vehicles. There might be an exit to Deep Ellum by way of Canton Street, but TxDOT is still toying with ideas for access there.
City staff appears to have given up on finding money to pay for an independent study that would analyze other options for the roadway. The state’s “hybrid” plan—which Council issued a resolution in support of last May, with a few caveats—rips out the current elevated highway and places it in a trench 65 feet below grade. The widest portion will accommodate a total of 10 lanes. The street grid would be constructed over the roadway, and TxDOT believes there will be 6.4 acres of “capping” opportunities also above the highway, which could hold parks or some type of economic development.
In designing the trench, TxDOT shot down an idea to remove the highway and replace it with a boulevard, in part because the stub of roadway is part of the National Highway Freight Network—and because Gov. Greg Abbott has directed the transportation commission not to fund any projects that remove lanes from freeways. Still, some council members wanted an independent study to consider and compare with TxDOT’s plans. Councilmember Paul Ridley asked about its status. Gus Khankarli, the director of the city’s Department of Transportation, said no federal dollars are available to study project alternatives because it would require Congress to remove I-345 from the freight network. And the city doesn’t have the money to pay for it.
Dallas does have federal dollars earmarked to study urban design around TxDOT’s hybrid plan, which would consider the structure of the street grid, protected bike lanes and sidewalks, economic development opportunities on the caps and any surplus right of way, and other related matters that will be the city’s responsibility.
In addition to the capping, TxDOT anticipates freeing up about 6.7 acres of right of way around the freeway by removing exit lanes and other infrastructure. But that’s still state property, and TxDOT sells its land at the market rate. That won’t be cheap, although it’s possible the city could work with Morris at the NCTCOG to find state and federal grants to help pay for it.
Still, city staffers expect that Dallas will need to come up with at least $430 million to acquire all that land and pay for building the deck caps over the freeway. (TxDOT will build the support beams, but Dallas will be on the hook for funding the caps themselves.) Dallas will have the right of first refusal to purchase the land.
The great promise of trenching the freeway was to restitch the street grid and create new opportunities for economic development. The state didn’t have the appetite to pursue fully removing the highway and routing traffic around downtown and Deep Ellum, but it believed it presented a compromise by placing it below ground.
What we’ll need to watch for now is how much money the city and its partners can come up with to fully realize whatever economic development opportunities these new highway decks and right of way present. The challenge will be whether it can come up with half a billion dollars to turn those possibilities into reality.
Author
