You may have noticed traffic in front of Dallas Love Field is getting bad. It's going to get worse. (Lara Solt/Staff photographer)
As our Steve Brown notes this morning, the modernized Dallas Love Field and the modified Wright Amendment are about to land major changes up and down Mockingbird Lane in front of the city-owned airport. There’s just one problem: City officials are concerned that traffic on Mockingbird is about to become untenable, thanks to a very likely and potentially very significant uptick in vehicular traffic to Love Field, which has but the single entrance off Cedar Springs Road and Mockingbird.
For that reason, city officials are seriously looking at taking two Mockingbird lanes below grade in front of the airport. They compare the proposed road redo to the “burying” of Spring Valley Road at N. Central Expressway as seen below. They’re also very quick to point out this is nothing like the long-ago-killed proposal to plant a toll road beneath Mockingbird from N. Central Expressway to State Highway 183, which Park Cities residents killed in 2000 before it ever had the chance to take a deep breath.
“The main lanes would go underneath, and folks going to the airport would stay at grade,” says Keith Manoy, the assistant public works director who oversees most of the city’s transportation projects. “It wouldn’t be a tunnel, but it could be cut and covered. For now, what I feel safe in saying is we’re looking at a grade separation.”
Many questions remain to be answered, chief among them: How long would it run, how much would it cost, and who would pay for it?
The Spring Valley "tunnel" below N. Central Expressway is the likely role model for what Dallas officials are looking at in front of Mockingbird. (Google Maps)
Would it go from, oh, Lemmon Avenue-Airdrome Drive to Denton Drive? Or would it run just “several hundred feet” in front of the airport, as Manoy suggests? Right now, it’s hard to say: The city’s so early in the process, says Manoy, “it’s hard to say how long it would need to be.” As for the cost, again, it’s early yet. But if and when the city decides to build the thing, Manoy says, it would likely come from a future bond program. There’s also been talk of Love Field kicking in to cover some of the costs.
But the city’s aviation director, Mark Duebner, seems dubious about the airport footing some of the bill. After all, he says, the roadwork would be just outside the airport’s boundaries, which means “it would be difficult for us to justify expending airport funds off-airport.” But just a moment later he adds this: “We’re looking into participating, because it does impact our customers. We’re just not there yet.”
And, after all, Love Field’s growing customer base is the cause for the likely Mockingbird makeover (or make-under, as the case may be).
Years ago consultants told the city that a Wright Amendment overhaul that allowed for direct long-haul flights out of Love wouldn’t have a massive impact on the number of people who fly out of the airport. Six years ago city officials said that about 5.8 million people would fly out of the airport every year once the Wright Amendment was (more or less) lifted. Last year, about 4.2 million passengers flew out of Love. But as federal statistics show, Love Field was growing annually long before the partial demise of the Wright Amendment earlier this month.
And Duebner says Virgin America’s ambitious plans and other schedule additions into and out of Love suggest earlier guesstimates could jump to 6.5 million annually. As our Terry Maxon recently noted, Love Field’s highest passenger total ever was 6,668,398 — in 1973, the year before Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport opened.
“Everyone will feel the impact of how busy Love Field will be,” he says. “It’s such a big number it’s hard to digest, but it’s the number we think about. It’s like having a major sporting event every day all day, with just one way in and one way out. It’s good to be a busy, successful, dynamic, convenient airport. But sometimes you need to wory about what it means to be successful.”
He says Love should really feel the crush by next spring break — or Thanksgiving 2015 at the latest.
“And when you look at the traffic counts, it impacts the intersections, the most significant of which is Cedar Springs-Herb Kelleher Way and Mockingbird,” he says. “We started this conversation two years ago, looking at the options. At one point we looked at a flyover going eastbound on Mockingbird, but we have flight restrictions because of the runways. The conversation has now moved toward: How do we move people not going to Love Field but using Mockingbird as thoroughfare without forcing them to stop? The latest concept we’ve come up with that’s workable is a grade separation below grade. Given our height restrictions and the width of the street, we’ve looked at Spring Valley and 75 as the most viable option.”
Duebner says he doesn’t believe the separation would need to run all the way from Lemmon to Denton. But a Mockingbird makeover might not be the only thing the city will have to deal with at Love in coming months: Duebner says sooner than later he will likely have to go to the city council to ask for new parking structures at the airport.
“Traffic is a byproduct of being a successful airport,” he says. “We’re trying to be cognizant of the impact on the surrounding neighborhood,” which will continue to grow in coming months and years. “We want to be involved in development, pedestrian access, traffic solutions. It’s our place to be in the center of the conversation to make sure everything around Love Field is exciting.”
And easily accessible, because as our Terry Maxon prophesied in June, sooner than later “traffic may be so horrendous around Love Field and the parking lots so crowded that many potential Love Field customers will use DFW Airport for less hassle.”
Just don’t ask about the People Mover.