Notes From Last Night’s Trinity Debate
If you’re playing along at home, you’ve already read the DMN’s recap of the gig. Here’s what I’ve got for you, including some advice for Mayor Tom Leppert:
– The venue for the debate was Rosemont Primary School, in Oak Cliff. Rosemont happens to abut that Kessler Woods development. Totally dig it. I’m right now fishing around for a lender who will do a no-money-down $1 million adjustable rate mortgage for me.
– Rafael Anchia was one of the moderators (former DMNer Victoria Loe Hicks was the other). That Anchia is going places. You heard it here first on FrontBurner. Not only is he so cute you could eat him with a spoon, but he exudes a friendliness and competence that are very appealing. He doesn’t come across like a politician.
– Angela Hunt got a huge reaction from the audience with this line: “There are lots of places we can put this road, and only one place we can put the park. So where is your alternative for the park?” I’ve been trying to parse this bit of rhetoric, which came in response to Veletta Lill’s question (for the third time) about where Hunt would put the road, if not in the flood plain. Let’s see here. “There are lots of places we can put this road, but I’m not going to name one, even though you’ve asked me the question three times. There’s only one place to put the park. Name another place you can put the park.” It’s kinda genius. And as I said, the audience went nuts for the line.
– I was disappointed in Jim Schutze last night. After fishing for questions on the Observer’s blog, he didn’t ask one when it came time for the audience to participate. So sad.
– One guy who did ask a question identified himself as a civil engineer who moved here from New York. In New York, he said, they’ve figured all this out. They use tunnels. He asked why we didn’t simply tunnel the road under the flood plain. It’s a wonderful notion. Tom Leppert answered the question thusly: “If you’ve got $2 billion, we’ll do it tomorrow.” In other words, as soon as I get my loan for a house in Kessler Woods, we’ll be able to afford the tunnel option.
– Speaking of Tom Leppert, I’ve got some advice for him: please, please take some public speaking classes. Or at least go buy yourself a Mr. Microphone and practice with it around the house. No fewer than four times, by my count, someone from the back of the room had to interrupt the mayor and ask him to speak up. Maybe he was intimidated by Veletta Lill, who has a deeper, more commanding voice than his. I don’t know. But when it comes to holding the attention of a room, Ron Kirk or Laura Miller he ain’t.
– Finally, let’s try an experiment. We now have the ability to turn on comments on a post-by-post basis. I’m turning them on for anyone who was there last night and who wants to pitch in. Don’t disappoint me.
12 Comments to “Notes From Last Night’s Trinity Debate”
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Does anybody out there really believe that building a freeway is going to help the region’s air quality? That’s not like treating heroin with methadone, it’s like treating heroin addiction with more heroin.
Did anyone ever debate the toll road vs parkway? As far as I can tell any road would only create more havoc at teh 635 and 161 interchange. So instead of haveing I-35 gridlocked with carspumping out carbon dioxide emissions, we’ll have I-35 AND the Parkway gridlocked with cars pumping out carbon dioxide emissions.
[...] Tim Rogers over at D Magazine and Front Burner has posted his notes from the Trinity Debate last night- complete with comments. As usual? love the recap. Dallas Morning News also has notes on yesterday?s meeting. And of course?we have the folks over at Unfair Park. Three different views- one topic. Too many choices? or wait?not enough choices????
For those looking for more than what the DMN had to offer from last night…
http://www.dallasblog.com/2007.....crowd.html
Leppert needs to learn the basics. When you add more roads, you automatically add more cars, which = MORE POLLUTION
“At the narrowest point it will be 5.5 football fields wide,” he says of the park. ”The road itself will be 40 yards.”
Is this an accurate quote?
No, not accurate.
40 yards = 120 feet
1 Lane = 12 feet, 4 Lanes = 48 feet, 6 Lanes = 72 feet
(Sounds good so far? We aren’t done yet…)
Breakdown lanes (shoulder) = between 6 feet to 10 feet per shoulder, so the conservative estimate would be 24 feet and the liberal estimate would be 40 feet. I will be using the liberal estimate because, like the pricetag and my waistline, things get bigger as time goes by…
Center median barrier to keep all of those cars from having head-on collisions: 2 feet minimum.
72+40+2=114 (Awesome job Mayor Tom! We have 6 feet to spare!)
But Mayor Tom, how are we gong to get on and off this high speed road through your park? Now let’s add 15 feet per side for entry and exit ramps and acceleration / deceleration lanes (and we all know that is a pretty weak estimate). 72+40+2+30=144
So now we are a liitle over on your generous estimate of 40 yards. Too bad I’m not finished yet.
How about the earthworks / berm needed to raise the tollway. That has to be twenty feet per side, minimum, to handle the weight of those big cargo trucks and SUVs. I am sure you are not going to call the berms part of the park, that would be disengenuous of you Mayor Tom.
72+40+2+30+40=184 … 61 yards. Your estimate is only off by slightly more than 50%. I wonder what other figures are off…
Now, let’s talk about the fences… You know, the ones the artists left out of all of those pretty NTTA watercolor diagrams. I know it is hard to paint chain-link, but somebody should mention them at least. We are going to need a fence to protect those children in the park. They might just wander into oncoming traffic on your parkw.. oops, I mean high speed, limited access, free gift from the city to the NTTA, TOLLWAY. And what a drag it will be for those tollway beancounters if they have to close the road for a few hours while they scrape some poor kid off the pavement. Don’t worry about the fences increasing the girth of your estimate, you can put them on the aforementioned berms.
I am only reading this because it was linked elsewhere. I have no respec for your publication, as it seems out of touch with the community it serves.
“…I’ve been trying to parse this bit of rhetoric, which came in response to Veletta Lill’s question (for the third time) about where Hunt would put the road, if not in the flood plain. Let’s see here. “There are lots of places we can put this road, but I’m not going to name one, even though you’ve asked me the question three times.”
We went nuts because we want a park, and the low speed access road we voted for in ‘98, not the Dallas North Tollway.
Here is some retoric for you, my alternative is scrap the road, it is unneeded and will cause more congestion than it solves, just like every other freeway in Dallas.
I’m the civil engineer from New York. Unfortunately, I have “somewhat” of a controversial reputation in Dallas. Go to to find out more.
http://blogs.dallasobserver.co.....k/schutze/
I’m not rcommending a classic, traditional tunnel under the Dallas floodway, but on top of it. We would atart off by building a basic at-grade 6 lane highway…no frills, no landscaping…and then enclosing it in a concrete sttructure, and burying it until the top of the buried highway, then a tunnel, is above the existing levee.
This would be a lot cheaper than a classis bored underground tunnel.
This would do three great things. First, we would eliminate the 50 year old levee. Second, we would get 1000 to 2000 year flood protection with a concrete structure, at a very low cost, not from earthen levees. Third, remember the Simon and Garfunkel song, “One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor”? The top of the buried highway, “tunnel”, would be at an elevation which would not flood. It would be a minimum of 140 feet wide, and could be made 200, 300, up to 800 feet wide, by excavating the Trinity River, to compensate for the cross-section taken away. By excavating the river, we could create a great ‘Town Lake”, up to 7 miles long, created by a dam at or near Corinth St.
Dallas can have a San Antonio venue in our Trinity River park by burying the Tollway-Highway! The Crows, the Perots, the Hunts should droll over this!
Go to the website below and learn about Kaula Lampur.
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/.....p?t=228685
Leppert talking about putting trees in big pots was really far fetched not to mention the fact that he talked in circles. I understand that lifetimevideo taped the event I contacted them and asked if the video would be made available for the public they said yes. If anyone is interested you can call them at 972-266-7613.
Angela Hunt really knew her stuff. Tom could have practice more on his rebutal. And Veletta could have been more confident instead of reading her lines. One thing I did value most is that Lifetime group, I have seen many of their political work and it is superb. Especially if you want to recall. They have done Lepperts political debate and K. Holmans league.
Angela Hunt stated at a debate last week that the land to be taken up by the tollway highway, priced at downtown property value, would be around 1/2 billion dollars.
Some might say that it is ridiculous to value land that floods at downtown property value.
Suppose a belt of land, in the Dallas Floodway, in the Trinity River floodway, 300 to 600 ft. wide, and 7 miles long, didn’t flood? What would be the value of this land? What would be the value of land upon which we could build a San Antonio venue?
How much more attractive would the Trinity River Park be locally, and internationally, if we had an even better San Antonio venue?
How much more attractive would the Trinity River Park be if we had a “Town Lake” venue, 7 miles long?
This can be done by using the proposed tollway highway. We can bury the tollway highway in a unique tunnel, which will reclaim land in the Dallas floodway, and provide even more, significantly more than 800 year flood protection.
If we build it, if we build a World Class Trinity River park they will come from all over the world, and then will Dallas become a world class city, and then will Dallas become economically stable, and then will Dallas finally come together as an internationaly city.
I attended the debate at Rosemont. I’d like to make a comment regarding all the visuals the toll-road proponents keep showing us. First, there was the nice watercolor with sailboats, then recently the animated version, which Brad Watson on Channel 8 (the DMN station of all places) showed was a fantasy by interviewing the Army Corps of Engineers, who said NOTHING is fixed. In other words, pictures at this point are fantasy.
The night of the debate, the NTTA rolled out a five-foot watercolor showing a section of toll road next to a park with dozens of small shadowy park enjoyers. I counted the cars on their toll-road. Six, yes, count ‘em, SIX! Six cars on this toll road. It’s the weakest propaganda, but I’m assuming they’re betting a picture is worth a thousand words, since they don’t really have the words.