Photo by Rachel Stone
Recent resurfacing on Polk Street exposed remnants of our neighborhood’s bygone brick-paved streets.
The homes of Winnetka Heights were built around the same time automobiles arrived in Dallas, but these bricks surely saw horse-drawn buggies as well.
Back to the future:
The new Oak Cliff roundabout is there, and a few projects remain before the two-way rerouting of Tyler and Polk are expected to be complete next month.
Tyler and Polk have been one-way streets for decades, holdovers from the city’s Oak Cliff thoroughfare plan, which wanted to create high-speed one-way couplets throughout our neighborhood, including Davis and Seventh. That plan, meant to move traffic quickly through Oak Cliff from the suburbs to Downtown, is also being undone at the 12th Street Connector.
The Tyler/Polk conversion, which cost about $6.4 million, has been in the works for a long time. City Council first approved the project in 2016.
New traffic lights throughout the project have been installed and were supposed to be finished in December. According to Mayor Pro-Tem Chad West’s weekly update, a final walk-through inspection of the stoplights took place last week.
Pavement is going in on Tyler Street, and Polk is still under “demolition,” as seen in the photo above.
