Victor Vandergriff, the Texas Transportation commissioner, said something wild Monday, just before we hung up.

We were talking about Interstate 345, the unmarked 1.4-mile stretch of concrete connecting North Central Expressway with Interstates 30 and 45 that's far better known as the overpass that cuts off Deep Ellum from downtown. I know — been a while since that divisive overpass was a talking point. But it was back at City Hall this week, in part because the Texas Department of Transportation's about to dig back into it with an expensive, yearlong-at-least traffic and engineering study. And the city now wants in.

On Monday, a council committee tentatively approved looking at the land beneath the 43-year-old overpass — how much it's really worth, what you can really build there if the overpass is erased. So I called Vandergriff, who'd overseen TxDOT's landmark CityMAP study that considered vanishing 345, just to discuss the ramifications of such a survey.

And at the end of that call, Vandergriff said — and here's the wild part — that not only is it possible we'll see 345 get vanished in the next two decades, but it's a very real "probability."

Which floored me, because on a cold December night in 2012, I attended a TxDOT meeting across from Dallas Love Field where the spokesmen and engineers were shrugging off any talk about razing the overpass. That night they offered nine possibilities for the future of the disintegrating 345, eight of which were just different shades of "rebuild." And for years after, TxDOT was telling everyone 345 was going to live forever. Then-council member Vonciel Jones Hill said the same thing.

And now here we were talking about the likelihood of burying it.

1 / 2A 1963 aerial photo by Tom Dillard shows downtown Dallas before the construction of I-345. The Cotton Bowl can bee seen at top. (Tom Dillard / The Dallas Morning News) 2 / 2Eight years later, I-345 was under construction.(Tom Dillard / Staff photographer)

And I mean that literally — as in, sinking the freeway below grade and decking it, maybe with a park but more than likely with mixed-use and commercial developments that would restitch the city center with Deep Ellum and East Dallas.

Patrick Kennedy, the urban planner and recently added DART board member who kickstarted this movement five years ago, said Monday he still wants to see the traffic brought down to ground level and scattered throughout a grid of boulevards. But as far as Vandergriff's concerned, putting 345 below grade is far more practical than razing it and putting 345's traffic — around 200,000 cars daily, most just skimming the city without every stopping here — on increasingly residential surface streets.

But whatever. Because, look, anything's better than what we have now: the 35th-most congested roadway in the state, even on Saturdays, according to TxDOT; a barrier between neighborhoods; and a rotting slab of concrete that has rendered some of Dallas' prime real estate a wasteland where the only residents are homeless.

"It's a great thing," Vandergriff said about vanishing 345 one way or another. "We have to recognize that TxDOT is about congestion relief and connectivity, and I am fully acknowledging and supportive of that. But we can do that with a mind toward keeping communities connected."

TxDOT's about to spend upward of $2.5 million conducting what it's billing as a Schematic and Environmental for I-345 Feasibility Study — which means, long story short, it'll study everything from the utilities beneath the overpass to the cars traveling along the roadway. TxDOT, which is about to look for qualified consultants, just wants to see what's possible — and whether CityMAP, which said the land beneath 345 could be worth $1.45 to $2.6 billion, undershot that number by one or two billion. (Kennedy has always maintained it's more like $4 billion, with tens of millions in property tax revenue there for the taking.)

Afternoon sunlight pouring between spans of I-345 light up murals between Canton St. and Commerce St. in Deep Ellum in Dallas Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2017. (Guy Reynolds)

The fact that TxDOT and City Hall are doing this now — before taking a long, hard look-see at Interstate 30, high on everyone's to-do list — is not to be taken lightly. Dallas has forever been beholden to the concrete salesmen and highway builders who carved up and gutted this city; countless councils, larded with Big Asphalt shills, were complicit in the wholesale murdering of neighborhoods. But the fact TxDOT appears serious about reconnecting the city — and the fact City Hall wants in — is heartening news.

After the council meeting, I had a long talk with Raquel Favela, the new chief over housing and economic development. Throwing in with TxDOT was, from what I can tell, her idea. She said she was "shocked" that Dallas and TxDOT seldom spoke about how highways killed cities, and vowed that was going to end now. And this 345 study was the best place to prove it.

"The cheapest infrastructure might cost the city more if we negatively impact the development potential of sites," she said. I've never heard anyone at City Hall say anything like that. Or this: "We need to be more thoughtful." Or this: Burying 345, one way or another, "will open up opportunities because you will remove a physical barrier."

A city official said that. Not Patrick Kennedy. And not the Congress for New Urbanism, which recently included 345 among its "Freeways Without Futures."

"Highways were intended to segregate certain parts of town," said Favela. "Here, we have an opportunity to maximize the impact of addressing the removal of 345 in a thoughtful manner."

Are we finally heading in the right direction? Yeah. It's a real ... what's the word? Oh, right. Probability.