Maple at Oak Lawn
A plan to redo the Gayborhood street from Oak Lawn Avenue to Mockingbird Lane is in the works
DAVID TAFFET | Senior Staff Writer
Taffet@DallasVoice.com
Maple Avenue, from Oak Lawn Avenue to Mockingbird Lane, has been identified by city officials as the most dangerous street in Dallas for pedestrians. Also on the top 15 most dangerous streets are two sections of Cedar Springs Road: The section from the Dallas North Tollway to Turtle Creek Boulevard ranked ninth and the section from Turtle Creek Boulevard to Field Street ranked fourteenth.
Planning for how to make Maple Avenue safer began in the fall of 2022 with an analysis completed and an improvement concept developed for the road from Knight Street to Medical District Drive. A public meeting was held to present proposed improvements in February 2023.
The project was expanded down Maple to Mockingbird Lane in the summer of 2023. And the project has now moved from the planning stage to design.
Plans include reducing car travel lanes, adding bike lanes, adding lighting, moving bus stops, closing one cross street completely, adding a traffic light and pedestrian warning signals and curb and median improvements.
Dallas City Hall prioritized Maple Avenue for study and improvement through the city’s Vision Zero Program, the goal of which is “to eliminate traffic-related deaths and reduce severe injury crashes by 50 percent by 2030.”
Vision Zero concentrates on identifying the most dangerous locations and on factors most likely to result in death or severe injury. Then proven safety countermeasures can be implemented, and progress can be evaluated.
One obvious change to implement is to reduce speeds. Next, planners prioritize pedestrians and bicyclists. Then they focus on equity.
According to Vision Zero planners, “traffic violence disproportionately impacts” the Black community. So to decrease death and injury in that community, people from that community must be included in the solution.
Vision Zero uses a collaborative approach using “engineering, enforcement, education and evaluation,” planners said. To be successful, the new traffic plan requires support of residents, elected officials and community leaders.
The timeline for the Maple Avenue project runs through 2028. For the next six months, city traffic planners will be analyzing public comments, revising the conceptual design and finalizing the scope of the project. In 2025, the city will design the project for construction in 2026-28.
One portion of the design requires city council approval. Maple Avenue from Oak Lawn to Mockingbird as currently envisioned will become one lane in each direction with a center turning lane and two bike lanes along the curbs.
The bike lanes get tricky at Oak Lawn Avenue as shown on plans displayed on the City of Dallas Department of Transportation website. At Old Parkland, traffic turning from Maple Avenue onto Oak Lawn Avenue headed toward I-35 will cross over the bike lane to a turning lane along the curb. The bike lane will remain aligned with the signal lane of traffic to cross Oak Lawn.
One new traffic signal would be added along the route between Medical Center Drive and Hudnall Avenue, at an entrance to Parkland Hospital labeled on the traffic department’s map as Parkland Boulevard on the traffic department’s map.
An “advanced warning beacon” for pedestrians — similar to the ones drivers often ignore on The Cedar Springs Strip — is proposed near Maple Springs Road.
Throughout the area, signal timing would be improved to facilitate the flow of traffic. The need for improving timing at Hudnall and Butler is specifically noted in the plans. But to do that, the city proposes closing Denton Drive Cutoff from Maple to Denton Drive. Presumably, buses would still be able to pull into Inwood Station.
And as for the buses, several stops would be relocated, especially around Wycliff Avenue. But it’s not clear whether buses will hold up traffic as they let passengers off in the bike lanes or if they’ll pull into the bike lanes to block bike traffic to let passengers on from the sidewalk.
Expect more news on this project through the heart of Oak Lawn as plans are finalized and construction begins. n
Sounds pretty foolish to me. I mean if we are talking crime prevention I’m all for it, but restricting traffic flow in a city already under gridlock will only put combustible pressure on other thoroughfares. Putting people off their regular [more direct] routes will cause more speeding, more reckless endangerment, more accidents, more traffic and potentially more deaths. But yay! Will make a ghetto safer from our attackers safer to conduct their business.
I look forward to the improvements along Maple. I’m don’t like the idea of closing Denton Drive Cutoff. I hope another solution, like a roundabout could be accommodated instead.
I live in this area and traffic Maple often. They are off the mark. The root of the problem rests with the drugged homelessness in the area. They need just to look at the profiles of the injured/killed to see what we see on a regular basis.