Dallas Isn’t Playing by Its Own Rules When it Comes to Driver, Pedestrian Safety

Just two days after 23-year-old Aya Knox was fatally struck by a car while crossing the street in downtown Dallas, leaders of a city-appointed task force announced to a council committee that Dallas is failing its pedestrians, and the stakes are life and death.

A report compiled by the Street Design Manual Work Group presented Dallas leaders with a list of 19 recommendations to enhance pedestrian safety throughout the city. The first of these recommendations is straightforward: “enforce adherence to policies.” The work group was tasked with reviewing the city’s street design manual in 2023 to ensure the policies aligned with initiatives such as ForwardDallas, the bike plan, and Vision Zero, which aims to eliminate traffic-related deaths in Dallas. 

Citing 2023 data, the report found that Dallas had 57% more traffic incidents resulting in fatality or serious injury per capita than Austin, El Paso, Fort Worth, Houston or San Antonio. The memo considers these deaths a  “consequence of poor street design,” and goes on to paint an unrelenting picture of city departments failing to put safety first when building Dallas’ roads. 

The fact that the briefing came just days after Knox was killed was a coincidence, but the report’s data suggests that tragedies like the accident she suffered are happening more often than not. Still looking at data from 2023, Dallas recorded 71 pedestrian fatalities and 198 severe injuries, meaning that just over five pedestrians are killed or hurt each week across the city.

Dallas regulates infrastructure characteristics, including paving, drainage, sidewalks, parking, and street design. According to workforce chair Melissa Kingston, who also sits on the City Plan Commission, probes into the transportation and public works departments (which have been consolidated since the report was developed) revealed “lots of instances” where city staff failed to follow Dallas’ own policies on infrastructure development. The report labels this a “culture of policy noncompliance” that was fostered under the leadership of former department heads. 

“More than one staff member said during the process that they didn’t think that they had to follow city policies on a city-initiated project,” Kingston said. “There seems to be a lack of accountability for failure to follow our own policies. … We gave an example of a two-way conversion that is happening at McKinney and Cole in Uptown, and how the original plans weren’t followed. The new design still doesn’t meet our city policy in a myriad of ways, and that was a year ago.” 

In another example given, the report notes that while it is Dallas’ Public Works department that is often charged with replacing or installing city sidewalks, those installations “often” fail to comply with zoning regulations in the area. 

“There are examples of Public Works making sidewalk or curb ramp improvements, only for the adjacent site to fall victim to having to either rip out what the City has just replaced or to go through an arduous waiver process to try and fix something that the City created,” the report claims. 

Some of this has gotten better since the Transportation and Public Works departments merged, the report acknowledges. Still, while officials are working to make Dallas’ roads safer, the progress comes only a few pieces at a time. 

Earlier this year, the City Council approved a plan aimed at increasing safety at Loop 12, which has been responsible for dozens of deaths over the last few years as pedestrians regularly attempt to cross the speedy, six-lane road. Officials are in the process of installing stoplights across the loop’s southern Dallas stretch to help slow traffic and give pedestrians a place to cross.

One issue the report found is that Dallas builds its streets for our firetrucks, which means our roads are wide. Wide roads have been shown to encourage faster driving, and the report suggests that the city invest in leaner equipment for Dallas Fire-Rescue that is more conducive to an urban environment. Another problem is that Dallas’ regulations span approximately a half-dozen documents: the thoroughfare plan, the paving plan, the Complete Streets Manual, and the Street Design Manual. Those all need to be combined into one governing document so that builders actually know what they’re supposed to be doing, the report urges. 

Because, as of right now, policies that help facilitate safer street building and are spelled out across city manuals are being “overlooked.” That includes measures such as lowering the speed limit and sharpening curb radii to encourage slower turns. 

“When it’s your goal to move cars as fast as possible in every circumstance, you end up making decisions about things like curb radii and lane width and pedestrian infrastructure that makes it less safe, not just for the pedestrians and bikers, but also for the people driving the cars,” said Kingston. “I think there has to be a mind shift.” 

Some council members applauded the report but worried that some of the suggestions might not be in the best interest of their more suburban-designed neighborhoods, where car reliance significantly outweighs pedestrian use. 

And then there is the bureaucracy itself. Director of Transportation and Public Works Gus Khankarli informed the council that the city had sought to have the legislature grant it the administrative authority to lower speed limits in neighborhoods, but the measure failed during the legislative session. As it is now, a speed limit change requires a lengthy and expensive traffic study to be conducted to “tell us what we already know.” 

Council member Zarin Gracey acknowledged the need for slower streets — and the hoops the city currently has to jump through to get them.

“Camp Wisdom has three lanes on each side. We’re reducing it down to four lanes and creating some walkable things to help. I know some of this stuff is happening, but I think you’re right,” Gracey said. “These are things that are long overdue, so we need to make sure we have all of our processes in place.”