Sunday, July 19, 2026 Jul 19, 2026
71° F Dallas, TX

The Knox Experiment Was a Disaster, Some Say

|

Photo: Chris McGathey

Last weekend, the folks at Better Block helped the city of Dallas convert Knox Street into a “complete street,” full of a bike lane, angled parking, and vibrant sidewalks.

I went out, thought it was a neat idea, and wrote about it. Business owners were wary, understandably. Turns out they weren’t the only ones. I’ve received a few emails this morning about the story. Here are a few excerpts:

If some guys from Oak Cliff are itching to spend someone else’s money to build a bike lane to the Katy Trail, I suggest they put it 1 block north of Knox, on Hester Avenue – a street that has 95% less traffic than Knox, is just about as wide, and has no commercial retail shops.

And this one:

…while I am in favor of bike lanes, this lane was added to bring bike traffic from Central to the Katy Trail. Is that logical? The design was awful and I cannot imagine any business owner finding that acceptable. I don’t know what follow up, surveys, monitoring etc… that were performed over the weekend by the city of Dallas or the Better Block people. Suffice it to say, I think it was a “Fail.”

Any other opinions? Drop ’em in the comments or email me: bradford at peoplenewspapers dot com.

Update: D Magazine contributor Patrick Kennedy ran some numbers on the Knox installation. I’ll let him get the page views.

Author

Bradford Pearson

Bradford Pearson

Advertisement