A section of Interstate 70 is demolished in Denver, Colorado, in 2021.
Photo by Hyoung Chang/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images
Plotting the Death of a Texas Highway
In an excerpt from the new book “City Limits,” Dallas weighs the fate of I-345, one of many downtown freeways in US cities that activists have targeted for removal.
In the new book City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America’s Highways, journalist and Bloomberg CityLab contributor Megan Kimble uses the Texas cities of Austin, Dallas and Houston to tell the story of the urban highways built through US cities in the postwar era. Once symbols of growth and prosperity, some of these roadways have recently become targets of removal efforts, even as multi-billion-dollar expansion projects proceed for others. The adapted excerpt below focuses on Interstate 345, a 1.4-mile elevated highway that forms the eastern edge of Dallas’ downtown loop.
In 2002, when Patrick Kennedy loaded up his Toyota Corolla and moved to Dallas, sight unseen, Interstate 345 was falling apart. Hundreds of fatigue cracks had started to appear in the floor beams that held up the roadway, which was completed in 1974. And although the Texas Department of Transportation would spend millions to retrofit the elevated downtown expressway, the cracks kept coming.