Dallas, Texas, United States
Dallas Pedestrian Network
The Dallas Pedestrian Network is a set of tunnels, skybridges and walk-throughs covering about 36 blocks of downtown Dallas, built piecemeal between 1965 and 1986 under a plan by Montreal planner Vincent Ponte. It is almost entirely private: building owners own and maintain the segments, while the city leases the small portions under public streets and maintains one short stretch. City policy has turned against the network since the late 1980s, and much of it is now quiet or discontinuous.
Governance
Who owns it, who runs it, what the rules are.
- Owner
- Corporations that own the buildings above own and maintain the tunnels, bridges and concourses beneath and beside them. The City of Dallas manages long-term leases for the small portions that run under public right-of-way and maintains a short section near Thanksgiving Tower; the rest is in private hands.
- Operator
- Individual building owners and property managers. No single operator exists.
- Hours
- Set by building owners; generally weekday business hours, closed weekends.[05]
- Public right
- Permissive only. Access runs through private buildings and garages, and owners can close their segments. No public right of passage was found.
- Who pays
- Building owners pay to maintain the segments under and between their properties. The city maintains only a small portion near Thanksgiving Tower. Ponte's plan limited public funding to intersections.
Legal instruments
- City of Dallas long-term right-of-way leases ↗The city leases the small parts of the system that cross under public streets to the adjoining private owners. Lease terms were not located.[01]
- Ponte and Travers, Dallas Central Business District plan (1969) ↗A planning document, not a law. It proposed that walkway segments be built piecemeal into new buildings, funded mainly by the private owners, with public money limited to intersections.[01]
Governing bodies
Open issues
- City and downtown leaders have treated the tunnels as a drain on street-level retail since at least 1989.
- The network is no longer continuous, and many segments are quiet or abandoned.
- No public body tracks the system's total length or condition; the city said in 2008 it had no such data.
Timeline
- The first component of the grade-separated pedestrian way opens.[01]
- Esquire's June issue publishes Vincent Ponte's proposal for Dallas, including air-conditioned walkways over traffic and shop-lined arcades tunnelled under streets.[03]
- On 15 August, Ponte and traffic engineer Warren Travers present a central business district plan to Mayor Erik Jonsson that separates cars and pedestrians onto different levels.[01]
- City Manager Charles Anderson invites Ponte back to update the 1969 plan, working with architect Harwood K. Smith.[01]
- The last component of the network opens.[01]
- Interviews for the 'Downtown Dallas 2010' visual master plan conclude that twenty years of policy had pulled people off the sidewalks into the tunnels, 'to the detriment of street life.'[01]
- Mayor Laura Miller tells the New York Times the tunnels were 'the worst urban planning decision that Dallas has ever made.'[03]
- A city long-range planning official states the city has done no active planning for the system in about twenty years, views it as a detriment to street-level retail, and holds only a limited role.[01]
- An April report under the Downtown Dallas 360 plan recommends discouraging further growth of the tunnels rather than closing them outright.[02]
The story
The Dallas Pedestrian Network grew from the ideas of Vincent Ponte, the Montreal planner behind that city's Underground City. Esquire published his proposal for Dallas in June 1968, and on 15 August 1969 Ponte and traffic engineer Warren Travers presented a central business district plan to Mayor Erik Jonsson. It called for separating cars and pedestrians onto different levels, with walkways built piecemeal into new buildings and later joined together. The first component had opened in 1965; the last opened in 1986.
Ponte intended the system to be paid for mostly by private owners, with public money limited to intersections, and that is how it was built. The result covers about 36 blocks; a 1988 count found 15 bridges and 26 tunnels. Corporations owning the buildings above maintain the spaces below. In 2008 a city planning official said the city's role was limited to managing long-term leases for small portions under public right-of-way and maintaining a section near Thanksgiving Tower.
Support faded by the end of the 1980s. Interviews for the 1989 'Downtown Dallas 2010' master plan concluded that twenty years of policy had moved people off the sidewalks and into the tunnels to the detriment of street life. In 2005 Mayor Laura Miller called the system 'the worst urban planning decision that Dallas has ever made' and said she would pour cement into the tunnels if she could.
Rather than closing them, the city chose neglect. A 2012 report under the Downtown Dallas 360 plan reportedly recommended discouraging further growth and unnecessary maintenance instead of a shutdown. Today the network still serves office workers on weekdays, with food courts beneath buildings such as One Main Place and Thanks-Giving Square, but it is no longer continuous. No public body publishes its length, condition or hours.
Questions people ask
Who owns the Dallas underground tunnels?
Who designed the Dallas Pedestrian Network?
Are the Dallas tunnels still open?
Did Dallas try to close the tunnels?
How big is the Dallas Pedestrian Network?
Sources
- Ultramodern Underground Dallas: Vincent Ponte's Pedestrian-Way as Systematic Solution to the Declining Downtown (Urban History Review, vol. 37, no. 2) — Urban History Review (Charissa N. Terranova) (2009)
- Dallas Pedestrian Network — Wikipedia (2026)
- Forty Years Ago, A Man Had a Plan for Downtown Dallas — Dallas Observer (2008)
- Downtown Improvement District — Downtown Dallas, Inc.primary
- The Dallas Underground: Your Guide To The City's Three-Mile Subterranean Tunnel System — Secret Dallas (2026)
About this record
Confidence medium · reviewed 2026-10-19. The session's web-search budget ran out before Dallas research began, so this record relies on fetched pages only. Best source is Terranova's 2009 peer-reviewed article, which quotes a 2008 email from city long-range planning official Peer Chacko on the city's limited role. The 2012 Downtown Dallas 360 report and John Crawford quote come from Wikipedia without a citation; verify against Downtown Dallas 360 documents or Dallas Morning News. The 2005 Laura Miller quote is confirmed via the Dallas Observer; the original New York Times article (3 August 2005, 'Rethinking Skyways and Tunnels') could not be fetched. Length and hours come from a 2026 local guide and should be checked on site. The skybridge count may have changed since 1988. No costs found. The old official site dallaspedestriannetwork.info now redirects to an unrelated domain.
Map geometry: 112 corridor features, © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), as of 2026-10-20. Levels come from OpenStreetMap tags and can be incomplete.
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© 2026 Open Civic Intelligence Ventures LLC. Quote with attribution and a link; terms.