Speeding cars crash into houses frequently enough that Ann Soto doesn’t use her front yard on Oak Cliff Boulevard at Twelfth Street.
That’s her house in the photo above, taken Sept. 15, when a truck crashed into her fence while she was out of town.
Neighbors say Twelfth is a speedway between Hampton Road and Edgefield Drive, a four-lane stretch of about 3/4 of a mile that has no stop signs or lights. The street is entirely residential, lined with side-facing cottages, but it contains no speed-calming mechanisms.
In the 30 years she’s lived there, homes on all four corners of that intersection have been hit, Soto says. Some, like Jesse Arriaga’s house on the southwest corner, have been hit four or five times.
The heavily trafficked road encourages high velocity and drag racing, neighbors say. And they say the city of Dallas has ignored the problem for 30 years.
After a speeding truck crashed into a house on Twelfth in April, City Councilman Scott Griggs created a police task force on speeding and illegal street racing. Dallas police set up speed traps and have given 140 tickets since April 1.
He released the below report showing seven accidents so far this year.
Neighbors along the corridor say speed traps are not making them safer, and they’re afraid someone will be killed.
They organized, made “Stop 12th” signs and T-shirts and came out in force for an outdoor meeting and TV news opportunity with City Councilman Scott Griggs and Michael Rogers, the city’s director of transportation, earlier this week.
Rogers promised to meet with them at their next neighborhood meeting Nov. 13 to come up with short-term strategies for calming traffic on Twelfth as well as ideas for permanent solutions, such as reducing it to three lanes, adding bike lanes or even speed bumps. The road is part of the city’s Thoroughfare Plan, which means that altering the roadway will require City Council approval, which would take a minimum of three months or so.
