Joppa residents have gone without a safe pedestrian crossing over the Union Pacific rail yard since 2018, and the replacement bridge they were promised now has a new timeline: spring 2029, according to city officials. The project has moved through funding approvals, federal grants and a recent Union Pacific agreement, but for a neighborhood boxed in by railroad lines, highways and the Trinity River, the finish line keeps moving.
A Crossing Closed, A Promise Made
Joppa is a freedmen's town in southern Dallas that is zoned for industrial use and has few routes in and out of the community, as reported by The Dallas Morning News. At a sparsely attended community meeting in 2018, Joppa residents voted to allow Union Pacific to permanently close a pedestrian crossing, according to the same report. In exchange, the city agreed to build an ADA-compliant pedestrian bridge parallel to the existing vehicular span, a stipulation laid out in a City of Dallas resolution.
Without that crossing, Joppa residents have had to walk beside speeding vehicles or squeeze between train cars to reach home, the Dallas Morning News reported. Dallas City Council awarded a contract to construct the vehicle bridge over the tracks in 2000, but that span, now about 25 years old, is too narrow for cars and pedestrians to cross safely together, according to a separate account from nbcdfw.com documenting neighborhood frustration over the delays.
Funding Pieces Have Been Falling Into Place
Money for the project has trickled in over several years. The North Central Texas Council of Governments' Regional Transportation Council approved $8,092,310 to fund the pedestrian bridge project on June 13, 2019, per the city resolution. Dallas was later authorized to accept a $1,225,000 federal grant through TxDOT, covering preliminary engineering work as part of a total preliminary-engineering cost of $1,305,370 that included no city funding, the resolution states. The city was designated the lead agency to administer that preliminary engineering under its agreement with the state.
The Dallas Morning News report adds that the Dallas City Council authorized an estimated $523,000 agreement with Union Pacific for the pedestrian crossing project, granting the city right-of-way permission while charging Union Pacific with overseeing and coordinating construction. The Dallas transportation department has said there has been extensive coordination with Union Pacific, the Texas Department of Transportation and the North Central Texas Council of Governments throughout the process, per the same report. The newspaper also cites a transportation department estimate putting the overall project cost at $10 million.
A Timeline That Keeps Shifting
When funding was approved in 2019, construction was initially expected to wrap by 2023, the Dallas Morning News reported. That timeline later shifted, with construction slated to begin in 2024. City officials now say completion is expected in spring 2029, according to the Dallas Morning News's latest reporting, leaving the exact reasons for the shifting dates unclear.
Joppa community leader Temeckia Derrough has said the process dates back even further. “This process with the pedestrian bridge has been going on already for years, since like 2015,” she told NBC 5. Dallas City Council member Adam Bazaldua has pushed for a faster outcome, saying he was seeking commitments to get the bridge completed in three years instead of the five years that had previously been discussed, per the same NBC 5 report.
For now, residents continue to navigate the narrow, aging vehicle bridge on Linfield Road — the same crossing captured in a May 2023 photo showing a Joppa resident riding a motorbike over the span. Until the new shared-use path is built, it remains the primary way in or out for a community that has waited more than a decade for a safer path home.
