Why Dallas sidewalks are in such bad shape

By Rod Scales

Dallas sidewalks are in bad shape. Thousands of bumpy sidewalks, tilted slabs and wonky joints across the city pose safety hazards and threaten Dallas’ aspirations of walkable neighborhoods.

The problem is so widespread as to be overwhelming to City Hall. The Department of Public Works recently found that recommendations by its Sidewalk Advisory Committee, of which I am a member, representing the North Dallas Neighborhood Alliance, are too costly to implement all at once to repair every damaged sidewalk. The result is a rather meager proposal by the department to fix bad sidewalks in just three small, focused areas around the city each year for the next two years. Of course, the areas that had the worst conditions or no sidewalks at all rose to the top for remediation.

That was a reasonable approach. But it left unaddressed the many thousands of problems that residents continue to trip over on a daily basis. The city should also amend its policies and practices to avoid this cycle of constant need for repair.

On an admittedly unscientific basis, a mini walking survey was done last summer by a handful of residents in Council District 12, in North Dallas. It counted 40,000 places where there were uneven sidewalk joints exceeding one half inch high, enough to cause a trip.

A walking survey that identifies 40,000 problems in front of 18,000 homes in just one district indicates a vast problem across the city.

In a presentation to the Dallas City Council, the public works department showed a graphic indicating 2,085 miles of missing sidewalks in Dallas. But that doesn’t tell the whole story; Dallas also has 1,081 miles of defective sidewalks. That is, 3,166 miles of sidewalk need fixing.

Los Angeles had similar problems, and in 2015, it settled a class-action lawsuit filed under the Americans with Disabilities Act for $1.4 billion. Dallas allocated money to maintain some sidewalks, but nothing to fix old, defective sidewalks. Will Dallas be forced into adequate budgeting?

There are no-cost solutions the city should explore right now. The city should thoroughly update its 20-year-old documents on construction practices for sidewalks. The current documents are ambiguous, and unless an inspector requires proper sidewalk construction, it isn’t likely to happen. While an update of those documents is in the works, key details are missing, such as how to install a new section of sidewalk against an old section.

Ever wondered why many sidewalks are sunken at the water meter locations? That is because even with updates to construction drawings, there still is no requirement to compact the dirt to prevent it later being settled in the pipe trench under the sidewalk.

These trip hazards and sunken sections are the result of 50 years of improper construction practices, with the cost to fix them now falling on homeowners.

Further building permit requirements still include a provision for a contractor to pay $208 for a sidewalk waiver, under certain, very limited conditions. Hard to fathom that one. I am ashamed to say, I used that waiver for phase 1 of a Preston Road building in North Dallas 30 years ago, but rectified the matter when we built phase 2.

Homeowners can turn to the city’s Sidewalk Replacement Program to fix damage in a cost-sharing arrangement. Nowhere does that website offer approved construction specifications so residents can download them to give to their contractors to install correct private-pay sidewalk repairs. Richardson and Frisco have letter-size PDF drawings on their websites for the public to easily access. This is another simple, no-cost solution.

Residents who care about sidewalks and try to report safety problems can do so using the 311 system. However, the city’s 311 website doesn’t include in the drop-down choices the option to report a sidewalk trip hazard. You’d have to know about the ADA accessibility concerns option. That option refers to constraints, barriers and ramps but nothing about trip hazards that violate ADA criteria.

Have you persisted in reporting a sidewalk trip hazard to 311 and wondered why nothing seems to happen? The service request gets closed quickly, before anything has been done.

When the city verifies a report, it doesn’t place a safety marker at the hazard. How about cheap red paint? It then takes many months for that repair to run through the Sidewalk Replacement Program for good reason; repairs are grouped by area, so residents must wait until repairs are being done in their neighborhood.

Without any indication that a 311 service request will be addressed, residents have little incentive to report a problem. The city does not go looking for these hazards, they wait for a resident report. The homeowner isn’t likely to report hazards, because the city charges them half of the repair cost. So no one is accountable and little is accomplished.

And many of these trip hazards are way bigger than a half inch. Some are as much as 4 inches and have been that way for years. No wheelchair is going up over that.

These are easy, low-cost solutions that the public works department could implement right now. I met some good people in the department during my time on the sidewalk committee. Most want to do the right thing, but somehow it just seemed to be an uphill battle. I finally gave up. You can only help those who want to be helped.

Rod Scales is a real estate investor in Dallas and a member of the Sidewalk Advisory Committee representing the North Dallas Neighborhood Alliance. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.

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