Kelvin Reed, 47, and his son Judah, 9, walked along the newly opened section of The Trinity Forest Spine Trail and marveled at the mountain bikers soaring off hills at a training ground nearby.
“When I was a kid I grew up in the Spanish apartments,” Reed said. “And all of this was like dumping grounds, some walking trails maybe. But it definitely wasn’t developed for anything like this.”
Reed and his son, who both love biking, scouted the location before riding from their home on Jim Miller Road.
“It’s very cool riding back here and seeing people who’ve come for the first time to be so surprised that this part of Dallas would have this,” Reed said.
The Trinity Forest Spine Trail and a soft surface mountain bike trail – a section of the contiguous loop that will soon connect the city – opened this fall, for the first time linking White Rock Lake and the Great Trinity Forest, the largest urban forest in the United States.
The Spine Trail connects the Santa Fe Trail north of the Tenison Park Golf Course in East Dallas to Samuell Blvd north of Interstate 30.
“It’s a project that had been promised to the residents for 20 years and had never actually gone anywhere,” said Philip Hiatt Haigh, executive director of The Loop Dallas.
Equity for communities
The Trinity Forest Spine Trail will serve portions of Dallas that historically have been left out of major pedestrian infrastructure projects, bridging the gap between communities divided by I-30, Hiatt Haigh said.
“One of the reasons why TxDOT partnered with us and we won an award on the south phase of the spine trail is because of the equity that the federal government is recognizing in their applications for infrastructure funding these days,” Hiatt Haigh said.
Over two-thirds of The Loop’s investment is south of I-30, a geographical division between the more affluent north and less developed south.
Hiatt Haigh says he hopes the shared public asset of The Loop inspires residents to see Dallas differently and helps bring some equity to the southern sector.
“Knowing that the trail in your neighborhood is the same amenity that connects through uptown and White Rock Lake and the Trinity River is really inspiring because we’ve never had anything like that in Dallas before.”
Trail’s 20-year vision
The connection between Dallas’ greatest natural resources has been part of the city’s parks master plan since 2003, Hiatt Haigh said.
In 2012, the old Trinity Trust created another master plan for the trail, changing its name from White Rock Creek South to Trinity Forest Spine Trail.
The trail design and construction lacked any financial backing, however, until Dallas County Dallas County Commissioner Teresa Daniel helped allocate $5.3 million as part of the county’s capital improvement program.
After the Loop was founded in 2014, Hiatt Haigh said, the Trinity Forest Spine Trail was a natural fit for the organization’s ambitious project to loop together 50 miles of walking and biking trails.
The Loop Dallas secured a $43 million public-private partnership with the city of Dallas in 2019, a major catalyst to begin joining 39 miles of existing trails with 11 miles of newly built trails.
What’s left on The Loop?
The most challenging parts of the loop to construct are the ones that remain, Hiatt Haigh said.
One of the last pieces to finish the Trinity Forest Spine Trail is a more than $20 million pedestrian bridge over Union Pacific railway that connects the greenbelt with Parkdale Lake.
“With the environmental challenges of floodplains, railroads and utilities, it shows how certain parts of Dallas were invested in and others were just left to their own devices,” Hiatt Haigh said.
The Loop helped negotiate on behalf of the city of Dallas a license agreement with Kansas City Southern railway to pass a hiking and biking trail underneath an active freight rail line, a first for North Texas.
The agreement allows the city perpetual access in the trail area for construction and maintenance, Hiatt Haigh said.
The Hi Line Connector – a 1-mile urban trail that will expand Katy Trail through Victory Park and the Design District to the Trinity Strand Trail – will open in early 2024.
“We’re really having to kind of reconfigure the street to make it safe for bikes and pedestrians,” Haigh said. “We’re showing that the priority is on people movement and not car movement.”
Within the next six months, The Loop will have 9 of the 11 miles of new trails either under construction or open to the public.
