One of the many Texas Engineering Landmarks in celebration of Texas ASCE’s Centennial: 1913-2013 “Engineering a Better Texas.” Visit them all!
NOTE: coordinates are for the 75/675 Interchange; but as the Expressway extends from downtown Dallas to McKinney, there are PLENTY of spots to visit this roadway. Tell us about yours!
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NORTH CENTRAL EXPRESSWAY (US 75) RECONSTRUCTION
ASCE Texas Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement (OCEA) 2002
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One of the oldest freeways in the nation, by the 1980s Dallas’ North Central Expressway was overdue for a refit. Reconstruction combined light rail transit service, arterial street improvements, and various traffic management strategies into a truly multimodal solution to this critical regional transportation corridor.
BACKGROUND:
“[A] super thoroughfare...the biggest and most expensive public improvement that has been made in Dallas...” (Dallas Times Herald August 18, 1949).
The story of North Central Expressway begins in 1921, when Dallas Mayor Frank W. Wozencraft appointed a committee to study the feasibility of a major north-south traffic artery. In 1927, the city of Dallas adopted the Ulrickson Plan which outlined the Central Boulevard project. Central Boulevard (as the thoroughfare was then known) was the No. 1 street project of its day.
The North Central Expressway was to serve as the connector from the burgeoning suburbs to the city’s central business and entertainment district.
It opened in 1949 as a four-lane expressway, touted as “one of the best thoroughfares of its kind in the United States,” (Dallas Morning News, August 24, 1947, and the project was extended in the mid-1950s to north of Richardson. The extension escalated the project costs to $21.3 million.
Additional construction during the 1960s and 1970s further extended the thoroughfare northward through Plano, Allen, and McKinney, providing a vital linkage to Interstates 35, 45, and other transportation corridors. Editorials predicted that “Central Expressway will do more than relieve traffic congestion...It will be the kind of public improvement that promotes city growth.”
And promote growth it did! Design engineers at the time could not envision the dramatic impact the expressway would have on the growth of the region.
By the 1980s, the old Central Expressway had become a traffic nightmare: narrow lanes, nearly non-existent on-ramps, poor geometrics, and an extremely narrow right-of-way.
ISSUES (source (
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• Approximately 1/4 of Dallas residents live within the corridor.
• Approximately 223,000 Dallas jobs within the corridor or 24 percent of the total city employment.
• Half of these jobs are adjacent to the Expressway.
• Over 27 % of the total real estate value in Dallas is in the corridor.
PROPOSAL:
Initial alternatives considered to increase capacity in the US 75 study area and
build on the existing US 75 configuration ranged from the No-Build alternative
to an elevated roadway, to significant widening. Operational improvements – vanpools to DART and improving the local roadway network – were considered to for development as part of an overall corridor plan to reduce congestion.
The North Central Task Force (NCTF) brought to the table the cities of Dallas, Highland Park, and University Park; Dallas County; the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT); Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART); residential neighborhoods; and the business community.
After 12 months of collecting data and after studying 128 different combinations of transit and highway expansion in the corridor, potential solutions were winnowed down to a single consensus — without taking a single vote.
After the formal approval of the design for the North Central Corridor, there were still many obstacles to overcome, including project management, funding, and public buy-in to the years-long traffic disruption. NCTF recommended and TxDOT adopted a completely new approach to managing the largest civil project in Dallas County’s history. TxDOT created a project manager position and recruited John Kelly to lead the project in Dallas. (Up to that point, TxDOT would manage highway projects with a veritable committee of individuals located throughout Texas.). Now project management had one, solely accountable, head.
Funding was another big issue. The NCTF organized volunteers from the real estate community (e.g., Commercial Real Estate Women) to assist the highway department in the acquisition of property needed to widen the highway. The NCTF and the TxDOT project office initially estimated the total right-of-way cost to be about $190 million. As a result of the efforts of NCTF volunteers and city and state officials, the actual land acquisition cost was about $90 million under the projection. The funds for the right-of-way were split, with 25 percent to come from Dallas and 75 percent from the state. Dallas voters (fortunately) approved the bond funds required to meet Dallas’ contribution requirements.
Utilities had to be relocated. Some buried lines had never been recorded. NCTF organized the CEOs of the utility companies to work as a team at one time, rather than each do their jobs independently and at different times.
The old Central construction had covered over African-American graves located in Freedman’s Park. TxDOT brought in a team of scientists and anthropologists who carefully recovered and reburied the remains. This work received national acclaim from the African-American community for its sensitivity in rectifying past mistakes.
Of prime concern was the issue of maintaining essential mobility during construction. NCTF formed the Mobility Task Force to help public agencies keep traffic moving during the projected 10-year construction period. Thanks to cooperation between the adjacent land and office owners, TxDOT, and the city police departments, the city manager reported almost no traffic complaints during construction – whereas he received 20 to 30 per week from North Central commuters prior to starting reconstruction.
The reconstruction provided the opportunity to introduce new multimodal and traffic management solutions into the corridor. Major freeway reconstruction, combined with light rail transit service, arterial street improvements, and
various traffic management strategies – representing a truly multimodal solution to this critical regional transportation corridor.
SOLUTION:
Construction of the DART tunnel, a new drainage tunnel, and the new highway lanes began in 1990. The existing highway and its bridges were demolished and hauled off.
For the first time in Texas urban highway history, architectural and aesthetic features were incorporated into the design – for instance: each new bridge was designed to reflect the “look” of the adjacent neighborhood. The DART rail stations contained artwork and were designed to also mirror the adjacent communities. 400,000 trees (Cyprus, Yucca, and Honey Suckle) make it the most heavily landscaped freeways in Texas. Even the retaining walls are color coordinated, two million square feet of which line the nine mile (14 km)-long project distinguishing the freeway.
The project was completed in less than 10 years, in November 1999 at a total cost of roughly $600 million —under budget and ahead of schedule.
Reconstruction, unsurprisingly, posed major challenges to planners, engineers, policy leaders and the public at large. Project success depended upon painstaking consideration of several planning and construction issues including involvement of government agencies and private groups in planning and construction; trade-offs between expediting construction and maintaining travel in the corridor and access to adjacent properties; use of unique and unusual construction methods; coordination of mobility efforts; Improvements to alternative routes before the freeway construction began; management of traffic incidents; and provision of timely information to the public.
The freeway was widened from four to a minimum of eight continuous general-purpose lanes – six miles of which are in a trench – showcasing state-of-the-art traffic management and design elements.
Light rail transit service commenced in January 1997 with the extension of DART’s red line from the Pearl Station in Downtown Dallas north to the Park Lane Station. [Dallas’first aerial station, Park Lane Station, is an oasis of wave-shaped flower beds and paving at ground level, rising 24 feet on water-blue columns to the platform near a major entertainment district of the city – but I digress.]
Feeder roads are cantilevered over the main lanes in some sections because of the narrow right-of-way.
When the reconceived North Central Expressway opened in 2000, the project also included landscaping and architectural features at multiple cross streets which set a new standard of urban highway design.
Since opening, the North Central project has received a number of national awards, and the North Central Corridor has been mentioned as one of the most beautiful and functional multimodal corridors in the nation
That beauty and dramatic improvement in highway function were visually evident on that afternoon in December 1999 when the Grand Parade formally opened the freeway for public use.
A FEW MORE FACTS (source (
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• When construction began, the North Central Expressway carried approximately 150,000 vehicles per day or twice the design capacity of 75,000 vehicles per day.
• About 40 percent of the north/south traffic in the corridor uses NCE.
• The amount of east/west traffic crossing the Expressway is greater than the volume of traffic using North Central. (As of the May 2005, NCE was carrying approximately 250,000 vehicles per day.)
• Approximately 21 percent of the DART bus and light rail trips pass through the corridor.
• When light rail service began in 1996, DART had spent almost $225 million in the corridor.
• A significant percentage of DART'S sales tax revenue is generated in the corridor
Major Junctions (source (
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South to North
• I-345 in Dallas (South End)
• I-635 President George Bush Turnpike in Richardson
• US 380 in McKinney
• Collin-Grayson County Line (North End)
FURTHER READING (highly recommended!):
Institute of Transportation: Urban Legend to an Urban Success: Reconstruction of US 75
and the “High-Five” Interchange in Dallas, Texas (
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Regional Mobility Initiatives Vol. II, No. 1 July 1997 “Multimodal Solutions in the North Central Corridor… “ (
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D Magazine The 35 Biggest Moments in Modern Dallas History -- #23 (
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TexasFreeway.com US75 North, Central Expressway (
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Vickery Place History of North Central Expressway (
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Mobility Investment Priorities Project Dallas/Fort Worth US 75 US 75 (N. CENTRAL FWY) IH 635 (LBJ Fwy) to SS 366 (Woodall Rodgers Fwy) (
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MITIGATING THE ADVERSE IMPACTS OF THE DALLAS NORTH CENTRAL EXPRESSWAY CONSTRUCTION May 1988 (
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TxDOT: US75 Corridor Study Public Meeting Handout (
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