If you’ve ever wandered along the White Rock Creek Greenbelt or jogged along the Katy Trail, you know what many other neighbors are discovering: Our city’s trail system is becoming like our highway system at rush hour, clogged and crowded.

But good news is on the way: The city and county have taken notice, responding with new trail construction almost everywhere we look. Bond dollars are being funneled into projects that will enable more of us to access the trails without having to drive to an entrance, and will connect the trails in Preston Hollow as well as linking us with trails in other sections of Dallas.

Read on to discover where we’ll be able to hike and bike next, right here in our neighborhood.

Blazing Ahead
Soccer fields, baseball diamonds, basketball courts — they’re all useful, says Rick Loessberg, Dallas County director of planning and development, but they benefit only the athletes who play those sports. These traditional recreational facilities can’t compete with the universal appeal of a trail.

“Trails cut across a broad spectrum of the population,” Loessberg says. “It doesn’t matter what time of day it is, what month of the year, you’ll find people pushing strollers, older people taking walks together, kids on their rollerblades, children walking home from school, the guys who look like Lance Armstrong in their skin-tight uniforms, people running because they’re trying to stay in shape or because they’re training for the White Rock Marathon …

“So you have this incredible group of people using the same 12-foot stretch of trail.”

Fifteen miles of new trail has been added in Dallas since 2005, making our system a total of 100 miles, says Michael Hellmann, the city’s park planning and acquisitions manager. That’s won’t be enough for the clamoring masses, however. Another 10 miles will be laid down over the next three or four years, and city and county plans ultimately call for 250 miles of trails in Dallas.

Eventually, it will be possible to travel from southern Plano all the way south of the Trinity River without ever leaving the trails. That’s pretty impressive for a city second only to Southern California in its connection with the automobile, Loessberg says.

“DART has made inroads to help change that, but the reality is, if we want to go pick up a loaf of bread, we’ve got to go get in our car,” Loessberg says. “If you talk to people in other cities, Dallas is one big sprawling area of highways and cars, and they’re not necessarily off base in that portrayal.”

The influx of people from other cities with more comprehensive trail plans helped to raise awareness that “Dallas was behind the times,” Hellmann says. But it took more than a comparison game to get the city up to speed — it took people not only wanting trails but using them, too.

For starters, people are growing more and more concerned with their health, Hellmann says, and trails provide a convenient way to get out and exercise. People also are starting to “think green,” he says, and are looking at trails as a means of alternative transportation, such as riding a bike to a DART rail station to get to work. The Katy Trail, for example, will take users to the DART station near the American Airlines Center.

And perhaps the biggest driver for trail construction is their role as a catalyst for economic development. The best example of this is right along the Katy Trail, where real estate prices have jumped 25 percent over the last nine years, and houses are now being built to face the trail instead of backing up to it.

“Years ago people would think trail systems would just bring in crime, but what’s actually happening is quite the opposite,” Hellmann says. “These trails are so popular and heavily used that they actually work as a built-in crime watch system.”

The first phase of the Katy Trail was completed in 2001 and was so successful that “everybody jumped on the trail bandwagon,” Hellmann says. That spurred his creation in 2005 of the Dallas Trail Network Plan, the master plan for the entire city, with additional updates made last year.

And unlike other well-intended but ill-fated comprehensive city plans, “it’s not just on a shelf gathering dust,” Hellmann says. “It’s actually being implemented.”

A Bird’s Eye View Of Our Neighborhood Trails
How will the city’s and county’s master plans impact our neighborhood over the next few years? Here’s a quick glance:

Katy Trail
Nearly 20 years ago, a group of neighbors looked at an abandoned railroad line and saw an opportunity. They saw the potential to transform this forgotten thoroughfare into crown-jewel parkland, something that had never been done in the city.

“I think the Katy Trail has set the bar for what a quality trail can be not just in Dallas, but nationwide,” says Eric Van Steenburg, Friends of the Katy Trail executive director. 

“It has inspired so many to consider other ways to get around and helped change our car-centric culture.”

And still today, the Katy Trail continues to be a trailblazer. Case in point, the proposed Katy Trail-Arts Loop, which would connect Uptown and Downtown with a concept unlike anything we’ve ever seen in Dallas. Under this plan, three new routes would extend from the Katy Trail toward Downtown, with each designed to accommodate automobile traffic, mass transit, cyclists and pedestrians using one thoroughfare, perhaps separated by barriers or possibly even with a multi-tier system.

“Today, 33 percent of the people in this country don’t use cars to get around,” Van Steenburg says. “So when you build a street built just for cars, you are ignoring one-third of the population. Instead, we should make streets available to everyone.”

This concept is a page taken out of the playbook used by other cities, says Councilman Angela Hunt.

“New York City has done this, and it’s been more successful than they hoped,” she says. “They have redistributed streets that accommodate more people, and it has completely transformed the feel of the city.”

In New York City, for example, medians have been repurposed as sidewalk bistros with tables, chairs and large planters that serve as traffic barriers — and street lanes have been added for pedestrians and cyclists.

“This concept brings life, this brings people,” she says. “Plus, there are economic benefits. This will be a selling point for businesses and homeowners. Look at the Katy Trail: Property value along the trail has gone up.”

It’s not yet certain where all the funding for this $20 million to $40 million project will come from, but options on the table include 2010 bond money and possible private funding from developers Harwood, Billingsley and Gables, all of which have projects planned along the proposed Arts Loop.

Katy Trail Expansion
In April, new construction will begin to extend the Katy Trail east across Central  Expressway along McCommas. It will then run north toward Glencoe Park, cutting between Hotel Palomar and Public Storage on Mockingbird Lane. Another section of trail will then be built along DART rail lines, connecting Mockingbird Station to the White Rock DART station at the corner of Northwest Highway and West Lawther. Once completed, these two sections will be united by a pedestrian bridge over Mockingbird Lane.

This $12 million project should be complete within two years.

Northhaven Trail
“We have a lot of green space in Dallas — the problem is, it’s just not evenly distributed.”

That’s District 11 Park Board member Lee Kleinman summing up the issue of green space shortage we face in Preston Holllow.

“In fact, almost half of the city’s green space is down by the Trinity,” he says. “Developers built this neighborhood so quickly, they left very little room for green space.”

This means we have to make the most of what little land we do have. Case in point: the new Northaven Trail that will be built along the Oncor easement that runs parallel to Northaven Road.

The planned trail starts at Valley Dale and Northaven Road, and will extend 1.5 miles to Hillcrest. Construction on this $1.3 million phase of the Northaven Trail should start by late 2010 or ealy 2011. The city’s hope is to ultimately secure funding to extend the trail to Denton Drive, making it 8.3 miles long.

“The initial phase will likely also include a connection to the White Rock Creek Trail.  This means it gets connected to the Cottonwood Trail, which goes right past TI as well as DART’s Forest Lane Station. It also gets connected to the planned Veloway with access to Walnut Hill Station, White Rock Station, Mockingbird Station and the Katy Trail.”

Kleinman thinks most neighbors will be delighted to have a neighborhood trail, but says he does expect some grumbling from homeowners with property bordering the throughway. To those neighbors, Kleinman points to the Katy Trail. 

“For those neighbors, the trail actually became an asset. Trails actually improve property value because they offer great recreation, and they reduce crime because you have people traveling through otherwise deserted areas.”

Kleinman also says he’d like to see some type of neighborhood trail group formed, similar to the Friends of Katy Trail or Preston Ridge Trail that exist in other parts of the city.

“The city is typically very responsive to what neighbors want, so if neighbors here want to have a say-so on this trail, they need to get a coalition going. This is going to be their neighborhood trail, so they should be involved.”

White Rock Creek Trail
We may not have any major bodies of water in our neighborhood, but one good downpour near LBJ Freeway and Park Central Drive can change all that. That’s where the White Rock Creek Trail crosses under the freeway, making it a flood hotspot when the creek overflows.
“We are especially seeing a lot of erosion on the north side because that’s the direction the water is running,” Kleinman says.

That poses a big problem because this is the side of the creek where the existing trail runs. The solution? Move the trail.

“We are actually moving the trail to the other side of the creek. We are building a bridge that crosses over the creek and ends at Hillcrest and LBJ,” Kleinman says.

While the bridge won’t necessarily help ease flooding, it will help keep the trail from being eroded. Construction on the new White Rock Creek bridge already has begun, and it should be complete within the year. But that’s not the only facelift White Rock Creek Trail is getting. The trail also will be widened along the Anderson-Bonner Park stretch, near Medical City, from eight to 12 feet.

“There won’t be designated bicycle and pedestrian portions, but by widening it, we hope there’s more room for everyone to use it.”
Construction on this widening project already has been approved, and should begin this spring.

To learn more about the proposed Arts Loop, visit friendsofkatytrail.org to watch a video on how New York City is implementing this kind of system.

TRAIL EXTRA:

A Little Help From My Friends
The Dallas Park and Recreation Department maintains all of the city’s public parks and paths, but a select few are pampered — that’s what friends are for.

“Most every major trail we have tends to have a ‘friends’ group, and it has brought support to a much higher level,” says trail and park project manager David Recht. “It’s important, if folks want to see the trail plan get implemented, to make sure their council members see that aspect of quality of life in their neighborhood.”

Four major “friends” groups are currently active — Friends of the Preston Ridge Trail, Friends of the Santa Fe Trail, Friends of the Trinity Strand Trail and, the closest to our neighborhood, Friends of the Katy Trail. These groups not only create political awareness of trails but also contribute hundreds of volunteer hours and raise millions of dollars for trail construction and amenities beyond what government money can do.