Skylines and streetcars

What a difference 81 years makes.

In 1937, the Houston Street Viaduct (left) was 27 years old, and a parallel trestle brought the streetcar across the Trinity River from Downtown to Oak Cliff.

Now the Houston bridge carries cars one way into our neighborhood, and the new streetcar line was added to it in 2015.

The Houston Street Viaduct was built following the massively destructive flood of 1908, which swept away or flooded all Trinity crossings, leaving Oak Cliff and West Dallas stranded from the rest of the city.

The 7,000-foot Jefferson Boulevard Viaduct, on the right-hand side of the bottom photo, was built for $6 million and opened in February 1973, making it 45 years old this month. Around 6,000 cars pass over the two bridges every day.

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Bike ‘litter’ a sign of progress

Bringing Dallas into a new era of transportation, one ride at a time

As someone who truly believes that if the world were a just place, Frito pies and chocolate-filled doughnuts would be recognized as their own food group, it is remarkable to me that my youngest child loves fruits and vegetables as much as she does. I mean loves them. I’ll find half-eaten bags of baby carrots in the stuffed animal bin, desiccated orange peels on the window sill, an apple core on her bedside table.

Sure, I remind her to return uneaten food to the fridge. I encourage her to use this newfangled gadget we’ve got called a trash can. But still, I find broccoli stems in her backpack and leftover grapes in the carseat.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. It brings me joy to find the remnants of her unusually healthy appetite (although, to be honest, it does make me wonder about a baby switch at the hospital). No, her discarded edamame shells and peach pits are evidence that she’s forming healthy eating habits, hopefully for a lifetime. Picking up a few scraps here and there is a small price to pay, and fretting about it is missing the point entirely.

That’s what I think when I hear the frenzy over rental bikes strewn across our city. In the last two years, several private bike companies have come to Dallas in a big way, allowing people to find and rent bikes easily and cheaply from their smartphones. In response, Highland Park has all but banned them. The City of Dallas is poised to regulate them.

But this isn’t something we should be wringing our hands over, and it’s not something that we should try to “solve” with heavy-handed and over-reactive government regulation that will very likely kill these new businesses.

No, this is a problem we should be celebrating. These bikes littering our city are the best evidence yet that Dallas is changing, and for the better.

The leftover bikes — the bike wrappers, if you will, are proof of a significant pent-up demand for bikes as a transpor-

By ANGELA HUNT

tation option. Conventional wisdom in Dallas has long held that Dallasites are attached to their cars with superglue and there is no real need for bike infrastructure because only hippies and children ride bikes (and who cares about hippies and children, amiright?). The success of bike share proves that many regularly-bathing adults will use bikes when it is cheap and convenient. We need to encourage this.

The success of bike share is also proof that people will get out of their cars if we give them cheap and convenient transportation alternatives. So let’s focus on how we can make other public transportation options more attractive to riders. If people will get out of their cars to ride bikes, why aren’t they getting out of their cars to ride buses? Is it that buses aren’t convenient enough? Not going to the right places? Not efficient enough? Let’s identify ways to improve other non-car transportation options and get even more people out of their vehicles.

Lastly, Dallas has lagged in investing in on-street bicycle infrastructure because of an erroneous perception that there isn’t a demand and roads are for cars. (By the way, it’s hard to justify building a bridge by the number of people swimming across a river.) All the people pedaling around Dallas on bright green and yellow bikes are proof that Dallas needs to invest in safe on-street bicycle infrastructure. The City’s $20 million recent investment in the Loop Trail, which will connect central Dallas’ trail systems, is a critical start. We need more.

As Jim Schutze recently wrote in the Dallas Observer: “If we think piles of bikes look tacky and we want to figure out how to clean them up a bit, well, ok, maybe. But we ought to be cheering this potentially transformational change, not fixating over minor growing pains.”

Angela Hunt is a former Dallas city councilwoman. She writes a monthly opinion column about neighborhood issues. Her opinions are not necessarily those of the Advocate or its management. Send comments and ideas to her ahunt@advocatemag. com.

Art

The city of Dallas is working out the final details of Spanish artist Casto Solano’s design for a tribute to the Vaughan brothers at Kiest Park. The artwork cost about $74,000. In fundraising led by former Buddy magazine editor Kirby Warnock, neighbors, friends and fans raised $68,000 in 2016 for a public monument to Oak Cliff’s famous rock-nroll sons Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Of that, $28,000 will go to the cost of the structure itself, and $40,000 will be put into a maintenance fund. The remaining cost will come from 2006 bond funds. The sculpture will consist of a steel screen with photos of the Vaughan brothers, song lyrics and information about their lives. The tribute will be visible from Hampton at its location near Cliff Teen Court, between Kiest and Perryton. That location was chosen because it was a gathering spot for Stevie Ray Vaughan’s friends the day he died in a helicopter crash in 1990 and has served as a memorial spot since.

A new project from Oak Cliff-based artist Giovanni Valderas features cute little piñata houses. Valderas intends for them to shine a light on the city’s lack of affordable housing and those being displaced by our neighborhood’s rapid redevelopment. Valderas is known for his guerrilla art projects that use traditional piñata techniques and are emblazoned with slogans such as “quien manda?” or “who rules?” This new project is called

“casita triste,” or “little sad house.” The project, which is focused on the Bishop Arts area, started on Dec. 24. Valderas asks that supporters send a postcard to Mayor Mike Rawlings or their city councilmember reading “All I want for Christmas is affordable housing.”

Preservation

A Bishop Arts oak tree named Old Charles has died. The city paid $50,000 in May 2016 to move the old oak tree from Seventh and Zang rather than having it cut down. The tree was in the way of a planned streetcar stop that apartment developer Alamo Manhattan is planning there. City Councilman Scott Griggs said that the tree, which was more than 50 years old, was insured and that “replacement trees are being selected.”

Two Oak Cliff neighborhoods made Preservation Dallas ’ list of endangered historic places in Dallas. The list includes homes and apartments near Lake Cliff Park and the Miller-Stemmons National Register Historic District just north of Bishop Arts. The Dallas Landmark Commission realized last year that certain homes around Lake

Concept design for Spanish artist Casto Solano’s tribute to the Vaughan brothers.

Cliff were intentionally cut out of the historic district when it was formed in the 1990s, and one of those is now scheduled for demolition. In Miller-Stemmons, homes built from 1910-1930 are endangered due to encroachment from Bishop Arts and poor zoning.

Sports

Several Oak Cliff-raised athletes will be inducted into the inaugural class of Dallas ISD’s athletics hall of fame this year. They include 1960 Sunset High School football player Jerry Rhome, 1988 South Oak Cliff High School sprinter Chryste Gaines, 1984 SOC basketball player Fran Harris and longtime Carter High School football coach Freddie James.