The Dallas City Council has authorized an estimated $523,000 agreement with Union Pacific for work on a pedestrian crossing over the railroad tracks near Linfield Road in the Joppa neighborhood. The agreement grants right-of-way permission and sets how much the railroad will charge the city to oversee and coordinate construction. Residents have long waited for the bridge, and some have walked along speeding vehicles or squeezed between train cars to get home.
Joppa is a freedman's town in southern Dallas. It is zoned for industrial use and is surrounded by railroad lines, highways and the Trinity River, which leaves few routes in and out. In 2006, the city decided to build a bridge over the tracks for vehicles. In 2018, residents at a community meeting voted to let Union Pacific permanently close a pedestrian crossing, with the condition that a pedestrian bridge replace it, according to a 2020 account by Dallas Morning News architecture critic Mark Lamster.
Funding was approved in 2019. Construction was first expected to last until 2023, then was slated to begin in 2024. City officials now expect completion in spring 2029. The city's transportation department estimates the project at $10 million overall. The department said in a statement there has been "extensive coordination" with the railroad, the Texas Department of Transportation and the North Central Texas Council of Governments.