Dallas leaders recently gathered to celebrate the groundbreaking for construction on a new bridge over US 75 that will connect trails throughout the city.
The Texas Department of Transportation, or TxDOT, approved the project about three months ago. The Northaven Trail runs from U.S. Highway 75 to Denton Drive.
President of the Dallas Park and Recreation Board Calvert Collins-Bratton told Dallas Express what led up to the groundbreaking of the US 75 bridge.
“The idea for the Northaven Trail began in the 1990s but didn’t begin construction until a decade later,” Collins-Bratton said in an email interview. “The first phase was from Valleydale (by the Jewish Community Center) to Preston Road, but there were always plans to extend it further east and west. The westward expansions were finished last year and now the trail goes all the way to the Walnut Hill DART station near Love Field.
“Going east was much harder and required a lot of engineers and partnership with TxDOT and others,” she continued. “There are well-utilized trails on the eastern side of Central Expressway, like the Cottonwood Creek Trail and White Rock Creek Trail, and finally, the idea came to build a bridge to connect those trails so that pedestrians and cyclists could travel east-west.”
The Dallas Park and Recreation Board was created by the City Charter and provides oversight to the Dallas Park and Recreation Department. The 15 members of this policy-making board are appointed and approved by the mayor and Dallas City Council.
The Herculean project took years to complete, Collins-Bratton said, and approximately $10 million was allocated from local sources like the City of Dallas bond, Dallas County, and state sources like TxDOT.
Collins-Bratton doesn’t foresee any projects like the US 75 bridge going up soon, but did mention that the LOOP and Circuit Trail Conservancy do have “plans to build bridges over creeks and smaller roadways in the eastern and southern parts of the city.”
