Crossroads of Change: How Major Thoroughfares Shaped Arlington

In the newest episode, “Crossroads of Change: How Major Thoroughfares Shaped Arlington,” host OK Carter sits down with two North Texas’ transportation leaders, Michael Morris, transportation director for the North Central Texas Council of Governments, and Victor Vandergriff, executive director of the Tarrant Regional Transportation Coalition. Together, they explore how I-30, I-20, SH-360 and the historic Bankhead Highway reshaped Arlington’s growth, mobility, and identity. From regional planning decisions to on-the-ground impacts, this episode unpacks the pivotal role major corridors have played in transforming Arlington into the modern city it is today.

Transcript

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Welcome to Arlington Archives, the podcast that dives deep into the stories that shaped The American Dream City. As Arlington celebrates 150 years of history and progress, we're bringing you the voices and legacies that make this city a cornerstone of Texas and a proud part of America's story. I'm your host, OK Carter. And one of these esteemed gentlemen is the world's greatest expert on transportation in this region. North Texas Council of Governments director of transportation Michael Morris. Hey, thanks to Mr. Carter. How are you, sir? I'm doing okay. Our other co-host today also knows a great deal about both Arlington’s history and regional transportation. That's Victor Vandergriff. He's a former commissioner of the Texas Department of Transportation and the current executive director of the Tarrant Regional Transportation Coalition. As you might imagine, he's also quite familiar with other aspects of the city's history. Welcome, Victor. Great to be here. Okay, stick around through all these podcasts about Arlington, and you've become an expert on this city's colorful history. Our topic today focuses on the impact of I-30 and I-20 on Arlington’s development, with a bit of the old Bankhead thrown in for good measure. Okay, guys, so decisions about where you were live, where you play, all kinds of things are attracted to a city, demographics, everything else. But before you can do that, before all that can happen, you've got to be able to get there, which is, of course, is with highways. Now, since I'm the old guy here, I'll start with just a little bit about the Bankhead Highway, which is the former U.S. 80 Division Street in Arlington. And just to catch people up on history, we had a Alabama, senator, Senator Hollis, but, John Hollis Bankhead and he formed the Good Roads Association back in 1916. His ambition was to have a southern route through the United States, a paid route all the way. And that, the main project for that was US 80, which is Division Street in Arlington, which opened here in November 22, 1922, I believe. So that thing was 25ft wide, kind of small by today's standards, eight inches thick. It went from Washington, DC to San Diego. It was one of the first transcontinental highways. And it made it gave our Arlington a real commercial spine for the first time, and it made possible for some of the entities in our colorful history, like Arlington Downs and Top O The Hill Terrace. I also doubt if something like GM would have located here if if, highway 80 hadn't already exist. Okay. All right, guys, so let's get up to speed with the stuff that you fellas are much more familiar with, which was, And let's start with you, Michael. We got the Dallas Fort Worth Turnpike, which, I think opened in 1957, and I think it was one of Texas's first modern toll roads, 50 centavos, which, by the way, is about six bucks. In today's money, it was much more popular than anybody knew. In fact, it had its millionth customer only three months in who happened to be a commuter from Arlington. So I know you've seen the impact, Mr. Morris, of of new roads like this all the time. Can you elaborate a little bit? Well, it's it's really funny, Mr. Carter, when you talk about the Bankhead Highway milepost zero at the white House and it goes all the way to California. And just think, in the 20, 30s, 40s and 50s, people taking their families and traveling across the country before freeways really existed, obviously, before an Interstate 30 existed. I think as a summer project with your family, go drive US 80, drive Division Street all the way to downtown Fort Worth and see those land uses of those those old, motor inns with swimming pools up front and cafes and service stations and places to get your car fixed. Imagine traveling the country in the 30s, 40s and 50s, but that is naturally what then occurred as the whole country transitioned from thoroughfare streets to freeways. So in the state of Texas, you don't have enough money to keep up with the transportation. The toll road was, initiated. I'm sure Victor is going to weigh in with regard to the position his dad, enforced as the mayor of Arlington. But you transition now these thoroughfare streets to freeways after World War II to, President Eisenhower, general Eisenhower, great learning lesson about, the point you made, Mr. Carter. You can't get anywhere without good transportation. And look at what's, occurred. You went from the Bankhead Highway, which created these entertainment potential nodes for tourism. Eventually, halfway between Dallas and Fort Worth, with a major exit off of Interstate 30, which then created this accessibility, where Arlington is put on the map, not just as part of a national system. So you're a small you're a small pebble in a in a in a pretty big pond. Now, all of a sudden, you're you're a big stone in a in a regional transportation system. I got you. I gave you a quick story, Victor. Okay, so I grew up in Graham, Texas. Every, every October, the family goes to the state fair. It's about 100 miles from here, about 120 miles to Dallas. My dad loved to sign up at 6 a.m. in the morning. We drive, about 25, 30 miles. Catch U.S. 80. We come all the way to Fort Worth, and my mother says, you know, there's a new turnpike that we could take instead of going through Fort Worth and Grand Prairie. This is this. This is my dad says, don't they have to pay for that? And she says, oh, yeah. She says, And he said, how much is he? She said she said, I think it's $0.50. And my dad's goes, I'm not paying no damn $0.50 to take a road. So we came all the way through 80 traffic lights, all the way through. All right, in Grand Prairie, part of Irving, downtown Dallas, and went to the state Fair, rode the tilt of world and all this other stuff. And it's end of the day. Everybody's beat. Everybody's exhausted. My my dads get in the car and he says, how much is that? Okay. And she says $0.50 is she says he says you got a couple of quarters. But you know, that's what happens here. Not only did he make that decision, lots of people started making that decision, didn't they, Victor? Well, they certainly did. You know, when my dad did that, of course, I wasn't actually born when the toll road up. I was telling you that you're just a baby. Yeah, I wasn't a baby yet. I was on the way. But I was born in 1958, and so I knew nothing but the toll road. For all the time I was growing up. It didn't come off until I was in college. And so it was a it was a vital part for Arlington, quite frankly. I loved later being and and I'm sure we'll talk with the some being in transportation roles and getting a chance to see how those decisions in the 50s, 60s and 70s played out in the decades beyond that. But it no question it was, a big game changer for Arlington and one of the, the, the ways one of the things that happened, by the way, is that back in those days, they often would pay for a new toll roads with bonds. And then once the bonds were paid off, the road would become free. And that was kind of the deal for the for Interstate 30 too. Although at the time I think they were called I-20, before I-20 was, and then we come to a point where there was so much traffic on it be. And the people taking it that actually was paid off way early, was it not, Victor? Yes it was. So this is a this is what, by the way, where you had to a conflict. You've been in transportation a long time ago. You but but if you were doing this today, you might have a disagreement with your father about about making that a free road. Would you not? I very much would. I think history proved that decision to to be one that maybe was could be rethought. Having said that, and he and I, he lived long enough to first off be very, I got a call when I got named the tollway authority. I didn't ask him. I just took the job, and, I got a call from my mother and said, your father would like to see you. And I didn't realize you were. You were on the tow road, you know, he became chairman of NTT. I didn't I did not know that. He said your father would like to see you. And, can you come by the house like tonight? And I said, well, okay. Do you know what it's about? It wasn't exactly a request. No, no, no, she said it's it's it's. Yes, but, I'm not going to talk about it, which is unusual for my mother. And, so I showed up and, and ironically, it's a table about like this round one in front of us. And just like Mr. Morris he has a paper positioned in front of him. It's the newspaper announcing my appointment to the tollway authority, and he had it all, like, framed out. Well, that's all that was all it was. The whole paper was folded up so you could see that. And so we chatted for a few minutes about this, that and the other, and he asked, say, I understand that you've been named to the North Texas, the North Central Texas Tollway Authority. And I said, yes, sir, I have. And he just said nothing good ever came from anybody that messed around with toll roads. So that was that. So that was his philosophy about it. Yeah. Yeah. But but having said that, I learned later that that really was not the case, that he was teasing me more than anything else at that point. But it certainly that voice of God talking to you like that was a little bit unnerving. I mean, I can imagine that this now, the toll road, it did become free, but it had already started, a new trend for Arlington because, by the way, that original speed limit was 60 miles an hour, which was pretty fast at the time. It kept getting faster and faster. I think it was eight lanes, was not originally eight lanes. And now some of it's, I think 16 lanes wide, but it didn't, although it encouraged commuters’ development in in Arlington, suburban growth. It wasn't it didn't have so much development alongside it because the Turnpike Authority, control the frontage roads, which is another aspect of this sort of thing that, you know, that you don't think about, that you can control it. Yeah. I think, Mr. Carter, you bring up 2 to 2 points that are heavily debated today, and they find themselves back into the the DFW Turnpike Turnpike discussion. Clearly, if you go to the public and say, you know what, we're going to sell construction bonds. When these bonds are paid off, the toll the tolls will come off. There's no question that has to be honored. But look at what's happened this eastern side of the corridor for 1.5 billion. Our office, working with TxDOT has funded the reconstruction of the whole DFW Turnpike from basically Cooper Street all the way back to Dallas and the pavement and the bridges from Cooper Street to downtown Fort Worth is the same pavement and structures. So you have you've you've given it's always 2 to 3 times more expensive to rebuild a project than to build the project. You've given a bill to your children to go find, literally our office. Go find a billion and a half dollars to go now, fund Cooper Street all the way back to Fort Worth. So the philosophy has changed where tolls are created, a system, and it's heavily debated. You could get 50% of the people to say no. The right thing is once the bond is paid off, it should go free. And someone else could say, well, the Dallas North Toll Road help build this toll road system, helped build that toll road system. If you didn't have a system, you would have never had 161. You would have never a Chisholm Trail. So the toll roads create a system of tolling, and all these facilities have to be rebuilt. So the better way is to look at tolls as a system and leave it to a, you know, an authority board that the governor resides on to make the best decisions on where those investments should be made. I am spent quite a bit of time. I've been urban studies at UTA, and one of the arguments you make all the time is whether you should provide a service, for free, which basically means it's not free because there's no such things as free. or whether you should design it so that the people who make them the highest use of it pay for much more share of it. Okay. But we're wandering here. So you've been observing our Arlington a long time, Victor. So the Turnpike Authority really made Arlington a geographic and economic, sort of midpoint between Dallas-Fort worth. Correct? No question. I mean, it paid off. And I think there was also another reason why my father, you know, a deal was a deal when they made the deal, you know, and so that's that was important to him to, keep his word. Keep the region's word. And but yet at the same time, that allowed them to, quite frankly, to be a tourist attraction, as well as a baseball stadium. The Cowboys, all the things like that. Would the Cowboys be here without 30? Would Rangers be here? Would Six Flags over Texas be? Probably not. In fact, I think it was already in the works when Angus Wynne was designing the Great Southwest Industrial District. So, without it, it just doesn't happen. If you look at the I think the population of ‘57 is right around 35,000. And then by 1960, 49,000. This is three years after. And then it just explodes. So and you can't do that without, without an interstate? Yeah. Without accessibility, you would never have that type of attraction. And being in the center of the region and that that original toll plaza that got people to get off it. And Arlington and Arlington being half way between Dallas and Fort Worth, it's it's created quite an entertainment. I have, you're dead and we're trying to to, to belabor this thing, but he was great about bringing economic development people, you know, CEOs and so forth to to, to Arlington. It sure. But they, he deliberately, tried to make it, make the most of that midpoint location. Didn't he, Victor? Sure. When he, he he practiced the art of, slowing up or slowing down, speeding up, accelerating so that he could demonstrate to visitors that were unknowing. You know, didn't happen there from out of state or out of the area that from Dallas to Arlington or from Arlington to Fort Worth, it was exactly the midpoint. He could do that drive to click it at exactly the same time for both directions from the downtown area. I know he told me once that I asked him what the greatest assets of Arlington were, and he said, it's a cliche, but it's location, location on location. And, I guess it's not a cliche if it's true, is it not? Yeah. All right, so there's, Interstate 30, former Turnpike, and then, we decided eventually, that we need a second road. Not we, but, Eisenhower you mentioned already. And then after him. Well, I think Eisenhower and Eisenhower put Nixon, not as the being in charge of this highway system, but he put the he made him sort of the main spokesperson for him. And, Tom told me that, he ended up speaking with Nixon several times about the need to have a new interstate here, this new 20 that they were talking about. He did. They had they had, quite a conversation about that. He was the point person for exploring those ideas for, President Eisenhower and, they I think they were successful, at least the start up of discussions were for sure. Absolutely. Well, I, I'm always having trouble figuring out exactly the the paper they took me to show. Show me the 360 interchange. When I was, a new reporter here in the early 70s. And it was out in the middle of this prairie, and there was this giant interchange with nothing connected to it, not 360, not 20, all that sort of thing. And then I think finally around 1980, 81, when that, that 20 came through. So, yeah, a little earlier in the mid 70s. Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, and I would drive down it initially and there would be no one on it. And then I thought, well, this is kind of a boondoggle. And then I just was a little bit early I guess, about it. So would you like to expand there, Victor, about the difference between the role of I-20 and, I-30 in terms of its impact on Arlington? Well, I think it had no less of an impact on Arlington. It allowed it to expand off of 30 and have a whole new frontier to the south of it. You can see, the, it took a while for it to completely develop, but it started with the Parks Mall, down there around 1980 when that opened up and that just issued a floodgate of development off of Cooper Street and Center Street coming into to, I-20 and, then the proverbial you can say, you know, love them or hate them, but the car dealerships, of which several I was a part of, started moving down there, and that created traffic patterns and, but but I do have a story of note that, I have to tell if we're going to talk about 20 and that is that at one point, if you go to South Arlington now, today, there's this large swath of soccer fields in open area. It's it's about 400 acres total of of, land that's there that has been used primarily for the public purposes. My grandfather owned that. And, I happened to be home from college when they had the groundbreaking for this. It was a park that they'd given to them. And my grandfather got into the car. I was driving my grandmother's in the back. He, as they call him, Hooker. Not because he was a car dealer. That was Thomas Hooker. He couldn't remember the guy's name in a test when he was a kid, but, so Hooker's in the car, and he's very nice to everybody at this groundbreaking. He takes off his hat. He has a cane because needed a walk. Had a bad knee, and he slams that cane into the car seat in front of. He was the back. Excuse me. Slams it into my grandmother's back and says that. Damn, Tommy, he talked me into this again. Because he'd given all of that land I and remember the plant and all these things. He gave land to bring these people here. You know, there was a lot of donations, like Arlington Memorial, I think, was originally supposed to be Hooker's. He's going to build a house there. And I asked Tom about it once, do you regret all these donations of land? And he says just one. I said, which one was that. He says Patterson Park, which is the area that you were just talking about. This now an area of services says, I just didn't see it that much. But, you know, we thank you very much, Tommy and hindsight and, and we're not giving you back. So we're we're going to go ahead and, hang on to it now, I-30 did a lot for Arlington's development, and then you get 20, and it's kind of a different thing because right away, it is open for commercial development. It has to find its own identity. I know at first they try to they want to make it one thing. The market wants it to be something else. Can you tell us a little bit about that, how those kind of things happen. Well, Mr. Carter is really interesting. You know, Victor and I are responding to three East-West facilities, Bankhead Highway, then Interstate 30 and the DFW Turnpike and then Interstate 20. It's not a coincidence that Arlington was at a major East-West movement in the United States. The the area west of the Mississippi has now taken off and in development. And I think it speaks very well to the point you just made. To a large extent, you know, I moved here in 1979. To a large extent, North Arlington was developed. There was a lot of housing in North Arlington. There was not very much in the southern side. Yeah, they were an argument you can make is it's, I-20 really balanced the city's growth. So no question, being overcrowded along the I-30 corridor. And as strong is, you know, General Motors Assembly Plant is to the gross domestic product, you now you now have interstate 20 as a major gateway, between the eastern side of the United States and the western side of the United States. And Arlington's blessed to have both Interstate 30 and 20 and just west of Fort Worth, you know, Interstate 30 stops, and it's all Interstate 20 once you get to to Weatherford. And then, of course, you have the third facility, the East west facility on Airport Freeway. So this now produced a a transportation project, now produced a blank canvas canvas with regard to development, when Interstate 30 was constrained by a lot of residential activity that that was already there. And you had downtown Arlington due to Bankhead Highway in downtown Grand Prairie, due to Bankhead Highway. But, you know, I think Victor's right. It opened up, you know, car, car dealerships, manufacturing facilities. We were attracted to all the trees. You know, I live south of Interstate 20 off of, Green oaks. Green oaks then becomes this first loop road connecting all of Arlington in a loop. That was a big deal at one time. Still is. And, you know, you now have Arlington now on the map. Look at the demographic growth of Arlington. You know, a huge increase now, now, Arlington's the crossroads. You know, we have DFW International Airport. So now you have Arlington as a major North-South gateway into DFW airport around the same time as Interstate 20 is mobilizing. So, you know, we talk about building systems instead of projects. Look at the system that Bankhead Highway transitioned to, Interstate 30 and Interstate 20, and it would never have occurred if the Bankhead Highway hadn't been put there, originally. Victor? I agree with that. You can see the incremental gains that happened in Arlington to almost full build, that capacity at over 300,000 people here. That could not have happened without the mobility, north, south, east and west connecting around it. Just just that simple. Yeah. Okay. Well, okay. We're getting near the end here. So U.S. 80 made Arlington a stop, I-30 made Arlington a destination, and I-20 made Arlington a multi center city with 400,000 plus people. So want to make any any closing points about that? And, I'm kind of curious too, about since both of you were in the transportation planning business, what you think the next big step in Arlington’s transportation evolution will be? Victor? Okay, well, I'm a transportation participant. This is a transportation planner, and an expert next to me. So I have to defer somewhat to what, Michael would believe is appropriate here. The world will see Arlington like it's never seen before with nine FIFA events this summer. And, the entertainment district will be the showcase to the world. We have purposely put a plan together to demonstrate the accessibility, not just of the reversible-managed lane that now exists on Interstate 30, the new $450 million TxDOT interchange at 30, the accessibility of Arlington, the DFW airport, the Trinity Railway express rail line, and 125 charter busses to get to a new transit bus hub. So FIFA will be the gateway for the world as the next thing in my mind. Yeah, we're looking forward to that rapid rail too, by the way. So, yeah, high speed rail one day. I know I rode the high speed rail in Japan. Maybe 30 or 40 years ago, and I kept thinking, we'll have this in this U.S. here pretty soon. I spoke too soon. Thank you. Victor. Thank you. Michael. Thanks for listening to the Arlington Archives. And thank you, Mike and Victor, again. Be sure to subscribe and share this podcast. For more stories, historical photos, and ways to get involved in Arlington’s 150th anniversary, visit Arlington150.com or follow@CityOfArlington on social media. Until next time, let us keep honoring our past and pave the way for what's next. The story of Arlington is still being written, and you are part of it. So long.