Houston Street Viaduct closure prompts early-morning game of vehicular Red Rover

Clearly, this is going to take some getting used to ...

Evans Caglage/DMN Staff photographer

No, really, the Houston Street is closed until fall 2014.

DOWNTOWN DALLAS — For weeks (if not months) we’ve known the Houston Street Viaduct connecting downtown to Oak Cliff was due to close as crews prepare to bring the streetcar back to Dallas. It became official at midnight: Houston’s closed to traffic beginning at Young Street, and a newly two-wayed Jefferson Boulevard Viaduct (complete with bike lanes) will be asked to carry the load until the fall of 2014.

And, as our Roy Appleton noted Saturday, the Zang Boulevard approach to the Trinity River crossing has been also closed to through traffic through the streetcar build-out.

Robert Wilonsky/Staff writer

Even if the Houston Street bridge were open, this isn't the direction in which you take it.

But all the warnings in the world, advance and otherwise, aren’t stopping some drivers from trying to drive on Houston this morning, as evidenced by the photo below. More than once early this morning we witnessed the man in the white pickup charged with guarding the entrance honk or have to get out of his ride to shoo vehicles off the bridge. And even then at least one made it over before the sun came up.