Dallas Plans to Deck Over a Highway — With a Parking Garage

Dallas' vision for highway lid topped with a parking garage. Image: Woodall Rodgers Deck Park Foundation
Dallas’ vision for highway lid topped with a parking garage. Image: Woodall Rodgers Deck Park Foundation

“The most Dallas thing ever.” That’s how Robert Wilonsky at The Dallas Morning News described a new plan to build a parking garage over a highway in the Big D.

The project adds an ironic twist to what has been, until now, a civic success story. Klyde Warren Park is a beloved five-acre space that sits on a lid on top of the Woodall Rogers Freeway. The new project, proposed by the Woodall Rogers Deck Park Foundation, would extend the deck with new public spaces and, on the northeast side, a bar and restaurant, offices for the park, and a parking garage with 70 to 90 spaces.

As you can see in the rendering, there is no lack of parking nearby. So why build more car storage on top of the highway?

Jody Grant of the Woodall Rogers Deck Park Foundation told Wilonsky that the garage would generate revenue needed to make the whole plan pencil out. The group is also counting on $40 million in public bonding to help pay for the $90 million project.

Even if you take Grant’s scenario at face value and assume this garage won’t be a money loser, it’s a sad commentary on the state of financing civic projects. Highway decks are supposed to heal the damage caused by urban car infrastructure. Can’t Dallas come up with a way to pay for this one without causing more damage by building new car infrastructure?

ALSO ON STREETSBLOG

In Texas, One Newspaper Laments the Highway Lanes Not Built

By Elana Schor |
The Transportation Enhancements program, which requires states to set aside 10 percent of their federal transport money for new bicycle and pedestrian facilities, among other projects, turns 19 years old this year. But you’d almost never know it after reading Saturday’s Fort Worth Star-Telegram, in which the paper tallies — with no shortage of alarm […]

Dallas Council Member: Texas Poised to “Compound Errors of the Past”

By Angie Schmitt |
The entire Texas highway machine — suburban real estate moguls, the construction industry, the governor, and the legislature — is pushing voters to approve Prop 7, a constitutional amendment that would mandate spending $2.5 billion in state sales tax revenue on un-tolled roads. The highway interests are telling Texas voters in unison that this measure, if approved in November, will fix congestion […]

Austin’s Ambitious Plan to “Cut and Cap” a Downtown Highway

By Angie Schmitt |
Since it was built about 50 years ago, Interstate 35 has been an enormous physical and psychological barrier through downtown Austin. Partly elevated, partly sunk, it’s the dividing line between what locals refer to as “east Austin” and plain old Austin. It’s also a major NAFTA trade corridor that carries 250,000 vehicles a day, and is […]

Robert Moses’s Fundamental Misunderstanding

By Jason Varone |
In the latest issue of the Regional Plan Association’s Spotlight on the Region newsletter, editor Alex Marshall has an outstanding essay responding to the recent burst of Robert Moses revisionism. An excerpt:   It all comes down to capacity. Like many people of his generation, I’m convinced, Moses essentially didn’t understand the different capabilities of […]

Goodbye Downtown New Haven Highway, Hello 1,300 Parking Spaces?

By Angie Schmitt |
Advocates for livable streets in New Haven have high hopes for the Downtown Crossing/Route 34 West projects, made possible by a highway teardown that will open 16 acres of prime, center-city land. But the opportunity to create a better connected, more people-friendly place is off to a disappointing start. Last week, the New Haven Board […]