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A truck travels beside a bike lane on Hemphill Street in Fort Worth on July 16, 2026.<\/p>\n
Elvis Martinez-Cartagena<\/p>\n
FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM<\/p>\n
Fort Worth\u2019s Hemphill Street \u2014 one of the city\u2019s main traffic corridors on the south side \u2014 has a long history.<\/p>\n
At a meeting at the Victory Forest Community Center on Wednesday, Aug. 26, staff with the city\u2019s Transportation and Public Works Department announced that six years after the city introduced a bike-friendly infrastructure, drivers will once again have five lanes on much of the thoroughfare.<\/p>\n
The street maintenance project that Fort Worth undertook in 2020 has become larger than itself. Here\u2019s what to know, and what comes next, for Hemphill Street:<\/p>\n
\u2018Block after block of comfortable cottages\u2019<\/p>\n
In the 1940s, the widening<\/a> of Hemphill Street between Magnolia Street and Biddison Street was a big enough deal that a ceremony attracted throngs of people.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cBlock after block of comfortable cottages, numerous stately homes, and a wealth of shrubbery, trees and landscaping line either side of the newly improved section on Hemphill Street as well as the previously widened area on south,\u201d a Star-Telegram reporter wrote at the time.<\/a><\/p>\n These days there are fewer stately homes and more strip malls. Past its glory days, the street adopted a grimier reputation, with crime and dangerous drivers, but there was a vision to transform it<\/a> into something resembling Magnolia Street, or one of south Fort Worth\u2019s pedestrian havens.<\/p>\n In 2020, Fort Worth restriped Hemphill Street<\/a> from Hammond Street to Vickery Boulevard, narrowing it from five lanes to three, and adding bike lanes, bus pull-outs and street parking.<\/p>\n The restriping and new infrastructure, advocacy groups and neighborhood associations hoped, could encourage business growth and make the street safer for the nearby schools, community centers and churches. Slower drivers, urban planners theorize, can encourage economic growth in addition to keeping streets safer.<\/p>\n \u201cI could see the vision,\u201d said Rosemary Galdiano, a Worth Heights resident and member of the neighborhood association. \u201cI could see what it was when I was a kid, and how I used to walk Hemphill all the way to the Berry Street theater \u2026 it was just a different life, a different world, and it felt calmer.\u201d<\/p>\n In April, the city shared the findings of a traffic study that revealed what many residents and community leaders in the Hemphill corridor\u2019s neighborhoods knew to be true.\u00a0<\/p>\n The new infrastructure had led to a decline in car crashes and pedestrian deaths, but traffic congestion continued to worsen.<\/p>\n According to the city\u2019s traffic study, which was presented during an April meeting<\/a> attended by dozens of residents, the number of cars driving on portions of Hemphill is expected to increase from roughly 13,000 to over 23,000 by 2045.<\/p>\n Hemphill was due for a restriping anyway, Fort Worth officials told residents \u2014 should it return to its days of five-lane freedom?<\/p>\n The city presented three options:<\/p>\n Leave Hemphill Street as is, with three lanes and the extra infrastructure.Return the street to five lanes south of Allen Avenue.Do away with the new infrastructure all the way down Hemphill, save for a section between Rosedale Street and Allen Avenue that would be reduced to four lanes.<\/p>\n For Galdiano, doing away with the infrastructure completely was a worst-case scenario.<\/p>\n \u201cI think Fort Worth likes to build itself as a large city with a small town feel,\u201d Galdiano said in an interview ahead of the meeting. \u201cBut if you\u2019re putting a highway through it, through the neighborhood, the urban core, it\u2019s not very \u2018small town.\u2019 It\u2019s not \u2018small town\u2019 at all, and it\u2019s not safe. And we really need to create spaces where the community can gather.\u201d<\/p>\n The question has almost become a kind of identity crisis for the corridor. Some with urban planning backgrounds believe that keeping the infrastructure in place will keep the neighborhood much safer.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn my experience \u2014 I go there on a regular basis,\u201d said Ann Zadeh, a former City Council member and an advocate for the pedestrian infrastructure. \u201cIt has calmed traffic and made it safer for folks that have to traverse the street in other ways besides driving through quickly. If there is a complaint to be had, it was that that corridor didn\u2019t get the three-dimensional full-blown infrastructure that one would need in order for it to be more completely successful.\u201d<\/p>\n Some, like Carter Park resident David Martinez, think that adding the pedestrian and bike infrastructure was a political move without the interests of the community in mind.<\/p>\n \u201cThe people that want the bike lanes, none of them ride their bikes on Hemphill in the south side,\u201d Martinez said. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing this is being done because of people who are trying to develop the neighborhood.\u201d<\/p>\n City chooses hybrid option<\/p>\n Results from the city\u2019s survey, which were shared at the Aug. 26 meeting, revealed that over half of the people who responded wanted the full return of Hemphill\u2019s five lanes. 15% wanted to keep the existing configuration from the street.<\/p>\n Representatives from Fort Worth\u2019s Transportation and Public Works department told a sparse crowd that the hybrid option \u2014 returning the street to five lanes south of Allen \u2014 was the department\u2019s ultimate recommendation.<\/p>\n The project, which will cost between $700,000 and $800,000 according to traffic engineer Rajnish Gupta, will be completed before April 2027.<\/p>\n The announcement brought some disappointment from people in the crowd like Richard Riccetti, a committee chair for the Hemphill Corridor Task Force who was a strong advocate for the original restriping project.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople drive crazy, so if we are going to be shifting back to five lanes south of Allen, there\u2019s still a couple of issues,\u201d Riccetti told city staff at the August meeting.<\/p>\n Riccetti also argued that congestion caused by trains was a major factor in Hemphill traffic, and said that driver speeds along Hemphill are just too fast.<\/p>\n After the meeting, Riccetti said that he believed that \u2018hardscaping\u2019 \u2014 the addition of trees and medians that can help direct traffic and keep speeds down \u2014 would be a better solution.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s what could help economic development, safety, and traffic flow for everyone,\u201d Riccetti said. \u201cIt\u2019s just a matter of if the city\u2019s going to have bond money to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n Fort Worth City Council member Jeanette Martinez said that many residents in her district, which encompasses a large portion of Hemphill Street, are not interested in becoming a Magnolia Street-type neighborhood \u2014 and agreed that it would take more than street striping to make Hemphill safer.<\/p>\n \u201cI do want to see improvements on Hemphill,\u201d Martinez said. \u201cI believe those need to be safety improvements, but we don\u2019t have the funding for that.\u201d<\/p>\n City council member Elizabeth Beck, whose district also includes portions of Hemphill, said that the responses from the community reflected that what makes sense in urban planning may not always fit the neighborhood\u2019s desires.<\/p>\n \u201cI hear the urban planning argument for it, but I also feel like we have to be context-sensitive, and what\u2019s good in a case study isn\u2019t always what\u2019s right for a neighborhood,\u201d Beck said.<\/p>\n In a statement on Thursday, Aug. 27, Near Southside Inc. \u2014 an organization dedicated to Fort Worth\u2019s Near Southside neighborhood \u2014 supported the existing orientation of Hemphill.<\/p>\n \u201cNear Southside, Inc. believes that preserving the current configuration is the best outcome for our district,\u201d the organization\u2019s president Megan Henderson wrote.<\/p>\n Because the restriping is a maintenance project and not a capital investment project, Beck said, it will not require council approval unless the restriping work itself is contracted out to a company for over $100,000.<\/p>\n In a statement on Thursday, Aug. 27, Gupta \u2014 the traffic engineer \u2014 said the city took residents\u2019 concerns to heart.<\/p>\n \u201cOur goal has been to listen to the residents and businesses with their concerns, look carefully at the data and find the best balance between mobility, safety and different ways people use Hemphill,\u201d said Rajnish Gupta, Traffic Engineer.\u00a0<\/p>\n Once the design of the new layout is complete, a spokesperson for the transportation department said, crews will begin taking out the current striping before laying out the new lane configurations.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/0715HemphillBikeLane-4.jpg\" "\\"0715HemphillBikeLane-4.jpg\\"")
A cyclist rides on a bike lane on Hemphill Street in Fort Worth July 16, 2026. Elvis Martinez-Cartagena FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM A new vision \u2014 but the same problems persist<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/0715HemphillBikeLane-3.jpg\" "\\"0715HemphillBikeLane-3.jpg\\"")
A bike lane sign stands on Hemphill Street in Fort Worth on July 16, 2026. Elvis Martinez-Cartagena FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM Hemphill\u2019s next steps<\/p>\n