District 10 Council Member Kathy Stewart held a community meeting earlier this week to discuss traffic safety on Abrams Road.
Attendees express their concerns at the D10 traffic meeting. Photo by Carol Toler.
In a March 19 meeting at Forest Meadow Middle School — less than 200 yards away from the sites of two well-publicized collisions on Abrams Road within the last year — Stewart provided information on upcoming traffic studies and fielded questions from neighbors about traffic safety on the road. She was joined by representatives from the department of transportation and public works, officers from DPD’s tactical division and traffic unit, and Richardson ISD officials.
“I thought it was a good opportunity for the residents in the neighborhoods off of Abrams to voice their concerns about safety on Abrams, because they are very legitimate concerns, and as well as then be able to offer some of their thoughts and suggestions on ways we can make Abrams a safer thoroughfare,” Stewart told the Advocate after the meeting.
Traffic issues on Abrams Road, namely pedestrian safety and speeding, have come under increased scrutiny from neighbors in recent months. Most notably, a collision in early December left two men dead in the active Forest Meadow school zone, which led to neighbors starting a petition to “urge Dallas City Council and Police to address Lake Highlands traffic dangers.”
“If that car would have gone the other way, it would have hit my backyard with my kids playing in it at the time,” one resident said at the meeting.
The City of Dallas Department of Transportation and Public Works, created via merger of the two previously separated departments in 2024, is currently conducting a traffic study on Abrams Road from Royal Lane to Meadowknoll Drive. Stewart said that “her hope” is to have the study (launched in January) completed within four to six months. Other traffic studies on Abrams, albeit covering longer stretches of road, have taken over a year to complete in the past.
Once the study is completed, it will include reccommendations for improving traffic safety on the thoroughfare.
In addition to the city’s traffic study, Stewart told the Advocate that she is currently searching for federal funding for a more comprehensive corridor study which would cover the majority of Abrams Road in District 10.
Even with a speculative timeline and talk of a more comprehensive study, some residents voiced doubt as to whether or not more research was the best course of action.
“If it takes eight months, by then 635 might change three times on that exit,” one resident said. “So then my basic question is: What are better ways for us to be using some of that funding for obvious things like the radar?”
Stewart said that community engagement will be an important part of the process going forward.
“It will test your patience, and I am learning that it’s just a bureaucracy of city government, but I believe that it happens at the state and federal level as well. But when you’re dealing with government entities, there’s just a lot of process that has to be honored and that just takes time. And for that, I apologize.”
