The Texas Department of Transportation last May sent Dallas City Hall a sneak peek at its plans to redo Interstate 30 East, from downtown past Fair Park to Haskell Avenue.

"And I was shocked," said Dallas Transportation Director Michael Rogers.

Shocked because the state's transportation agency proposed to make the highway wider, with more lanes, exit ramps and frontage roads. Shocked because the design created more barriers between downtown and East Dallas, the Cedars, Fair Park and Deep Ellum, and gobbled up enormous swaths of real estate that could be used for development instead of more concrete. And shocked because TxDOT had proposed something that went against its very own CityMAP, the design document City Hall wholeheartedly embraced in the summer of 2016.

Rogers on Monday went to the City Council's Mobility Solutions, Infrastructure and Sustainability Committee with a rebuttal to TxDOT's conceptual rendering.

Dallas leaders have called the $1.3 billion redo one of the city's biggest transportation priorities and a key battleground in a fight between regional mobility and neighborhood-centric ideals. They hope a redone Interstate 30 can reconnect South Dallas and downtown — especially as they look to revitalize Fair Park. And Texas Central Partners wants to build a high-speed rail station next to Interstate 30, which officials hope will become a transportation hub.

Rogers' briefing — based in part on previous studies and recommendations provided by Downtown Dallas Inc., high-speed rail group Texas Central and TxDOT itself — proposed eight "guiding principles" he wants the state to follow as its rebuilds I-30 from downtown to U.S. 80.

Among them: Provide better connections for cyclists and pedestrians across I-30. Make frontage roads "complete streets," with storefronts and green spaces at street level. Do not let the freeway grow any higher or wider than it currently is. And consider bringing down the elevated portion of the road below grade — like North Central Expressway — to better connect neighborhoods torn asunder by all those lanes of high-speed traffic.

The city also wants TxDOT to maintain the street grid — "where appropriate" — and restore those deck parks seen in renderings dating back more than a decade. And it wants the state to tether the fate of the oft-maligned Interstate 345 — the unmarked 1.4-mile stretch of concrete connecting North Central Expressway with Interstates 30 and 45 — to whatever future plans are in store for I-30.

"And I cannot understand how the conceptual plan did not have this," Rogers said in an interview Monday. "It was mind-boggling to me."

Rogers and other city officials say they have not yet spoken to TxDOT about the contents of Monday's briefing. But in a statement to The Dallas Morning News on Monday, the agency said these guiding principles "offer a solid foundation for TxDOT and the city to shape and refine the future of the I-30 corridor."

"TxDOT welcomes the input," said the statement, "and we will work closely with the city staff on this project. Early communication such as this benefits all parties."

For his work, Rogers was celebrated by a council that isn't used to city staff pushing back against TxDOT's proposals.

"I am not sure to what extent people understand how radical what you've done here is," said East Dallas council member Philip Kingston.

Kingston and committee chair Lee Kleinman of North Dallas told Rogers to demand more from TxDOT — "to be a little more bold," said Kingston. He said Rogers ought to demand TxDOT actually make I-30 narrower, and to do away with access roads that do nothing more than eat up real estate while encouraging drivers to travel at high speeds down one-way lanes. Kleinman, too, supported slow "smart streets" above the new-and-improved I-30 that would be safer for pedestrians.

Another long-ago rendering of what downtown and Deep Ellum and Fair Park could look like with a new I-30 (HNTB)

Pleasant Grove's Rickey Callahan and Kleinman also want Dallas Area Rapid Transit included in the conversation, if only to discuss the possibility of a high-speed bus lane somewhere on I-30. Rogers said after the meeting he couldn't believe he neglected to include DART among his possible to-dos.

"I don't know what came over me to not put that as a guiding principle," he said.

The council plans to vote to accept these guiding principles at its Feb. 27 meeting. Then, the city and TxDOT will try to hash out their differences and kick off a lengthy public input process. It's too soon yet to say how long that process will take.

"I welcome this great opportunity to establish a great partnership not just with TxDOT, but with all the stakeholders who want to move Dallas forward," Assistant City Manager Majed Al-Ghafry said after Monday's meeting.

The I-30 makeover is already years in the making. In 2009, construction company HNTB completed a 72-page document called "Connecting Dallas: I-30 East Gateway Vision." That document came about with input from, among others, the city, TxDOT, DART, the State Fair of Texas, Baylor Health Care Systems, John Scovell and Ray Hunt's Woodine Development Corp. And the plan pushes many of the same concepts Roger demanded Monday, especially a restitched city and more economic development.

That document also contains two deck parks, including one at Exposition Boulevard, and a new bridge at Commerce Street that looks like the art deco entryways into Fair Park. Many of the renderings in that document date back to 2005.

"Connecting Dallas" wasn't part of Monday's briefing. But many ideas could surface, or resurface, between now and whenever TxDOT begins designing I-30 East.

"We should be thinking boldly here," Kleinman said. "We should be asking for a lot, knowing that we're not going to get everything."